A lot has happened since then so we sat and did a follow up while I sipped on a Shrub soda called Emerald City (cold pressed green apples, celery, org apple cider vinegar, raw sugar, fresh mint and chlorophyll) Delicious!
Genna (Part 1 of 2)
“ I am originally from Canada and I came to Australia in 2000 to study Naturopathy. I moved here almost 10 years ago. I’ve been working as a Naturopath in Lismore ever since. I have my own practise and I work in South Side Pharmacy as well.
I guess how this Shrubs scenario came about is as part of my Naturopathic training we spend a long time with functional food, doing a lot of hands on things like fermenting, making your own dosas, sourdoughs, kefirs, etc. That’s very much how I live my life as well. I have a few things I’ve always done that are delicious and people always say. You should sell that! I’m not going to be another sauerkraut maker or kale chip maker though. I’ve been making Kombucha, water kefir and doing delicious infusions and ferments since I was 17 years old so well over 20 years.
There’s some amazing history behind Shrubs. The word comes from the Arabic ‘Sharab’ which means to drink. The English on their trips to the Middle East seeking fine silks and spices would have discovered this method of preserving fruit in vinegar. It was a Middle Eastern tradition because a lot of those cultures don’t drink alcohol. It was a beverage for pleasure but also it was a practical method before the advent of refrigeration to save fruit and herbs in this form. This was taken back to England where they would have harsh northern winters and long stretches of time where there would be no fresh food. Scurvy was a genuine fear and a shrub was a medicine.
There is an old expression calling an English person a Limey but they didn’t actually travel with limes, they travelled with lime shrubs because limes would have gone off on the ship as well. Shrubs have been around for a very long time. They were used as a method of preserving but also started becoming part of the early Apothecary crossover between booze and medicine. There was all these great crossovers back then, surgery and barbershop, your pharmacist also dealt in opium and cocaine. There was this old world coolness about this way of preserving fruit and herbs for cocktails but also as a medicinal tonic.
The beautiful thing about shrubs is vinegar naturally gives you a little bit of a lift. There is a little kick to it. There is zero alcohol in vinegar whereas kombucha can have a wee bit. Only with refrigeration did the shrubs fall out of fashion so the coke and the soft drink brands became popular. They were a bit more modern and they had refrigeration so they didn’t need to preserve fruit in that way.
About a 18 months ago I started playing around making shrubs and it clicked with me. This is me, I can do this! It’s tangible as we live in this region with such abundance of amazing fruit. The whole point of a shrub is to take the excess at the height of the season and preserving it for later. Right now I’m going crazy with citrus 24 hours a day. I was doing pineapples all Summer. Crazy amount of fruit processing when it’s on so in the middle of winter you’re drinking strawberries. There’s a beautiful ritual and a cyclical nature to it that I am also looking forward to getting to know better. This has been my first cycle and knowing my timeline intimately with the season is something I’m still establishing.
The other thing I love about this business is, even though it’s a healthy product I don’t want to market it as a health food product as such. I have a very balanced approach to my practise and to my life. I by no stretch of the imagination preach or live like a Yogi. I definitely enjoy a drink and I definitely enjoy a party. It’s about living life and celebrating life. The idea of preserving life to the point where you are not even living is ridiculous, so I love a product like this. It is healthy and you can drink it as a soda but you can also make a delicious boozy cocktail out of it. It is probiotic, it is alkalising, it is anti-inflammatory and it does support digestion but to me it is a celebration of the beauty of nature…fruit and plants. I take so much inspiration from the natural world every day. I get so excited with bowls of strawberries and giant watermelons. I want to communicate that passion and excitement for the beauty and abundance of nature in a product.”