The founders of a ready-to-drink mixed cocktail company are planning the next stage of the business.
Charles Roche and Eleanor Holcroft launched Liquid Intellect a couple of years ago on the back of a successful few years mixing drinks at some of the capital’s swishest bars including Bar Hercules Soho, Scout LDN, Peg + Patriot, Satan’s Whiskers and Nightjar.
Cocktail specialist Eleanor and award-winning bar tender Charles went on to create a Jaffa cake flavoured bottled cocktail for one of the country’s biggest supermarket chains which continues to sell today.
They recently left the bright lights of London and set up a new base in the west Leicestershire village of Appleby Magna.
They plan to starting making fresh batches of their range of drinks in the county once they secure a premises licence.
The current four flavours they make are:
- Cookie Dough Old Fashioned, made with cookie dough vodka, Whiskey Thief bourbon, Mozart dark chocolate liqueur and vanilla bitters
- Jam Doughnut Negroni, flavoured with things such as Tanqueray gin, distilled jam doughnuts, grain spirit, clarified strawberry juice, Chamberryzette, Campari and sloe gin.
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- Pina Colada Punch, infused with ingredients such as Bacardi Carta Blanca, Sailor Jerry rum, pineapple syrup and coconut water
- Banana Bread Manhattan, which is a mix of flavours such as clarified banana juice, cognac, Bulliet rye and Cocchi Torino sweet vermouth
The 500ml bottles retail for £25 and contain enough for around eight drinks over ice.
They sell them in shops and bars and restaurants and online through Not on the High Street and Master of Malt.
The couple moved up to Leicestershire from London to be nearer to Eleanor’s family home.
Charles said: “We are both industry experts and were running some of the top 50 bars in the world before setting up our own drinks consultancy.
“We’ve got various clients and we’ve been doing, for instance, commercially based drinks for bars that need to produce them in their thousands and thousands.
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“We also work on brand strategies for people like Glenfiddich, coming up with cocktails they can recommend.
“We started on bottled cocktails when we consulted for a big supermarket brand and I get a sense of real achievement whenever I see that product on the shelf.
“We launched our own four cocktail bottles last February.”
He said their drinks are a million miles from alco-pops, and they are very open about what goes into them.
The Jam Doughnut Negroni, for instance, uses the flavours of real doughnuts infused into the alcohol through distilling.
They use a low pressure still which means they can evaporate alcohol at low temperatures so that the flavours are more subtle.
Charles said: “A lot of care and attention goes into our products and we wanted to create drinks that are literally ready to pour from the fridge.
“We are not making huge batches, just taking each week as it comes.
“We’ve got some ideas for new flavours and will do some special releases in 2020 and maybe add to the existing range too.”
He said they had found a good unit in Appleby Magna, giving them room to expand, and the landlord had been a great help.
Up to now, Charles said, the number of bottles produced had been in the “thousands”.
He said they hope to have a premises licence in place this month.