Mike Riley and Jim Squires, founders of False Ox, Toronto’s next great cocktail ingredient start-up, are a couple of real weekend warriors.
Meaning that they spend every spare minute of their precious weekends at farmers markets, buying up seasonal produce, straining batches of preserves in obliging restaurant kitchens or manning their booths at various craft fairs around town. And this is all on top of their day jobs — Squires designs escape rooms, Riley is a graphic artist — and family lives, which Squires describes as “pretty full,” given the five school-aged children between their two east-end Toronto households.
It’s all been worth it, since they’re beginning to establish a veritable monopoly on the city’s shrub market. What, precisely, is a shrub? Well, that’s a question Riley and Squires have been asked more times than they can possibly count.
“Shrubs are a really old drink that stems from people preserving seasonal fruits and vegetables in vinegar and sugar,” explains Riley. “And it was a popular drink for people who couldn’t drink alcohol hundreds of years ago. It’s actually really refreshing.”
Nobody was more surprised at how refreshing drinking vinegar could be than the False Ox founders, themselves, who started making it for Riley’s wife, who has a wheat allergy and, as such, was left out of all the beer fun — Riley and Squires’ other drink-centric hobby.
“It was really Mike’s wife that got us on to this and we were kind of, like, ‘Vinegar, that’s ridiculous,’ ‘Who drinks vinegar?’” recalls Squires, “But then once we’d made a couple, we really liked them and every time we had parties they’d get drunk, so we thought we’d give it a go.”
False Ox launched in June and is already finding such a loyal following among people who love the tangy, all-natural fruit preserve that they’re inspired to expand the line. Some use shrubs as a cocktail ingredient, others simply add a splash to soda water to liven it up. And since all of their shrubs — from strawberry-mint to apple-cranberry — are made with organic apple cider vinegar, some people are buying them as part of an overall plan for healthier drinking.
That trend towards more natural mixers for making cocktails is also driving the fortunes of kombucha, a fermented, probiotic-rich tea that’s billed as an anti-oxidant booster, digestive aid and natural liver cleanser.
Toronto-based Tonica Kombucha, for example, even has cocktail recipes on its website, because they know their clientele is looking for healthier ways to drink — and, possibly even counteract the booze to the point that it will stave off a hangover.
Along these lines, False Ox’s Riley says people have high hopes that drinks made with his ginger-beet shrub will also ease the pain the following day, although, he, himself, is skeptical that it makes any difference.
Hangover or not, it can’t be bad for us to move away from artificial flavour, colours and overly-sweet cocktail ingredients. Both kombuchas and shrubs are better for us than, say, colas or grenadine syrup.
What’s more, both taste fresher and, tangier — cocktails made with shrubs and kombuchas are delicious, refreshing way to give cocktail hour a healthy makeover.
Shrubs to take you through to February
For those who don’t do Dry January, try these shrub cocktail options adapted from False Ox and Tonica Konbucha’s recipes:
A Drink Named Sue
1 oz (30 mL) False Ox Strawberry Mint Shrub
1 oz (30 mL) aged white rum
1 dash of Coster’s Prescription Burnt Citrus Bitters (any orange bitters will work)
3 oz (90 mL) mineral water
1 mint sprig
1 lime slice
Build in an ice-filled rocks glass, stir and top off with mineral water. Garnish with mint spring and lime slice.
Makes 1 drink.
Detox Retox
1 oz (30 mL) False Ox Beet and Ginger Shrub
1 ½ oz (45 mL) London Dry Gin
3 oz (90 mL) mineral water
1 to 2 pieces candied ginger
1 lime slice
Build in an ice-filled rocks glass, stir and top off with mineral water. Garnish with lime slice and candied ginger.
Makes 1 drink.
Tonica Bloody Mary
1 oz (30 mL) lime juice
2 oz (60 mL) of vodka
3 oz (90 mL) Ginger Tonica Kombucha
5 oz (150 mL) Bloody Mary mix
3 oz (90 mL) mineral water
1 celery stalk
1 lime slice
Build in an ice-filled rocks glass, stir and top off with mineral water. Garnish with celery and lime slice.
Makes 1 drink.
Tonica Mule
1 oz (30 mL) vodka
1 oz (30 mL) lime juice
2 oz (60 mL) sweetened cranberry juice
3 oz (90 mL) Ginger Tonica Kombucha
3 oz (90 mL) mineral water
1 to 2 pieces candied ginger
1 lime slice
Build in an ice-filled copper Mule mug, stir and top off with mineral water. Garnish with lime slice and candied ginger.
Makes 1 drink.
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