Where the fruit comes from

We don’t grow anything. We buy it, from a short list of people we trust and ring more often than they’d like.

Blood orange, Sicily

Blood oranges get their colour from cold nights, and the slopes around Etna have plenty of them. The season is short, January to April, so we buy a year’s worth of concentrate at once and spend February nervously checking the weather in Catania.

Grapefruit, Spain

Pink grapefruit from Murcia. We tried three suppliers before settling on one that leaves enough peel oil in the juice for our extract to work with. The other two were sweeter. Sweeter wasn’t the point.

Pear, Kent

One orchard, one family, one very patient man called Graham who has now explained the difference between a Conference and a Comice to us more times than either of us can count. We use Conference. Graham would like you to know he recommended it.

We don’t grow anything. We buy it from a short list of people we trust.

Mango comes from an Alphonso co-operative in Maharashtra, as purée. Lemons come from wherever is in season and good, which is why lemon + elderflower is sometimes out of stock.