INVESTIGATING THE NON ALC WORLD DURING DRY JANUARY: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE TEAM BEHIND LAORI

Dear Curious Readers,

Did you read the last post? So you're already full on as per discovering what dry January is? we keep investigating the world of beverages that are distilled but without alcohol. We contacted several producers to understand the new techniques that are being developped, last fall, we talked with one of these producers: the duo behind Laori.

Enjoy!

    •    How did you develop Laori? How much time did you need?
We developed Laori in three cycles. Meaning we developed one prototype with three variations. This prototype was then tested with end consumer and a sensorics panel. We gathered feedback from them and used it to develop the next prototype and tested it again. We did this cycle three times and after 9 months, a lot of stability and shelf life tests in the lab we launched Laori Juniper No 1.

    •    Do you have experience in distillation before starting the brand?
I started developing the product in my kitchen and had no experience with distillation before. I just love to cook and guess I know a few techniques. So I started reading a lot about it and watched videos. That way I learned and applied the knowledge with my own experiments. After some time Christian joined me as a co-founder. He is a food scientist and part of his education is to know about different processes of which distillation is one of them. With his knowledge we were able to bring the product development to a new level.

    •    Did you know immediately what you wanted to achieve?
I came up with the idea for Laori when I was at a night out in Berlin. I was at a fancy bar and didn’t want to drink alcohol. I ended up with not so delicious and very sugary mocktails and lemonades. I said to my friend: “I just want to have a Gin & Tonic without the alcohol”. So this was always the goal to get the Gin & Tonic experience just without the alcohol.

    •    Which other nonalcoholic beverages inspired you?
When I came up with the idea for Laori three years ago the range of nonalcoholic beverages available in Germany was very limited. There were few brands from overseas and there was no brand from Germany by that time. The alternatives I tested didn’t taste like Gin and definitely did not give me the Gin & Tonic experience. So I decided to do it myself. The taste I was looking for was not available on the market and we only had examples of how our product should not taste like. So we got our inspiration from alcoholic Gin.

READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW HERE