Botanical tonic
Salted Honey Drinking Vinegar
MOTHER shrub · shrub / drinking vinegar (honey-sweetened)
Richmond, Virginia, USA
A spare, three-ingredient shrub built on organic unfiltered apple cider vinegar, wildflower honey, and Appalachian sea salt from J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works, sold as a still concentrate rather than a ready-to-pour soda. It drinks sharp and bright, with the cider vinegar driving a puckering acidity that honey rounds into a tart-sweet balance and a faint saline thread keeps from turning cloying. Within our botanical-tonic shelf it sits at the vinegar-forward, low-sweetness, zero-carbonation end of the family, closer to a culinary switchel than to a sarsaparilla or ginger tonic, and it is meant to be lengthened with sparkling water or spirits. A well-made, food-friendly mixer whose vinegar bite makes it more of a connoisseur's tart sipper than an everyday crowd-pleaser.
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The maker
MOTHER shrub is a small-batch drinking-vinegar maker founded in 2015 by Meredyth Archer, who grew up in West Virginia drinking sweetened vinegar tonics her grandmother swore by. She revived the tradition after finding a sweet-fruit-vinegar recipe in a family cookbook from the 1800s. The shrubs are crafted in Richmond, Virginia, using responsibly sourced organic and non-GMO ingredients, and the Salted Honey expression leans on Appalachian sea salt from J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works.
Ingredients & nutrition
organic unfiltered apple cider vinegar, wildflower honey, unrefined sea salt.