Woodland inspired and crafted using berries, botanicals and ingredients foraged from nature, there’s nothing quite like ‘Aelder’, ‘Amarosa’ and ‘Ana’. These deliciously different drinks are bursting with richness and intensity – each one skilfully crafted to capture and share the incredible flavours that nature has perfected.
These three new liqueurs promise to be the most versatile spirits in any drinks cabinet: ideal for after dinner sipping, neat or on the rocks; for refreshing spritzes when topped up with sparkling wine or soda; and for mixing into all kinds of cocktails, party punches and winter warmers.
AELDER WILD SPICED ELDERBERRY LIQUEUR
‘Aelder’ is the original Buck & Birch liqueur: created in 2016 to round off a wild food supper club when no other spirit would do. The rapturous reception it received on the night and the demand that followed were the impetus for creating today’s Buck & Birch liqueur range.
The star of the Aelder show is of course the elderberry: a phenomenal fruit used for millennia as food, medicine and more, harvested from the Elder Tree. And these elderberries pack a punch when it comes to flavour: the same intense fruitiness as blackberries but with lovely undertones of dark chocolate and a subtle earthiness.
An incredible 3,500 of these little super-berries go into just one 50cl bottle of Aelder spirit. Made seasonally and in small batches, the berries are gently macerated and seasoned with Scottish spirit, along with a blend of hand-picked spices and botanicals for a drinking experience bursting with intense fruit flavours and a velvety smooth texture.
Beautifully balanced and complex, Aelder is equally at home sipped neat (it’s the perfect alternative to port), by adding 15ml to a glass of champagne for an ‘Aelder Royale’, or mixed into subtly spiced cocktails.
The ultimate Aelder recipe is ‘Hot Aelder Punch’: Scotland’s answer to mulled wine that could become one of the nation’s best new festive traditions! Heat 200ml of fresh apple juice till warm. Pour into a mug and top up with 50ml of Aelder. Add 10ml of BIRCH vodka. Stir and enjoy!
AMAROSA WILD SCOTTISH SPRITZ LIQUEUR
The Italians have Aperol, the English Pimms, and now Scotland has a spritz to call its own: Amarosa.
The hero of this complex, perfectly balanced and wildly refreshing liqueur is the rosehip – the small scarlet fruit of the wild dog rose bush, often a first prize for budding foragers to make sweetly tart home-made syrups and jellies.
In Amarosa, we combine these zesty hips with a blend of wild herbs and botanicals and season with premium rum for a truly distinctive taste.
The classic serve is an Amarosa Spritz: an apertif that combines 50ml of Amarosa with soda or sparkling wine, served over ice. Or for the colder months, an elegant Amarosa Old Fashioned sees50ml of Amarosa stirred together with 35ml of dark rum and three dashes of orange bitters over ice in a rocks glass, served with an orange twist.
ANA BIRCH SYRUP CARAMEL LIQUEUR
For lovers of sweet caramel, decadent cream liqueurs and coffee, it has to be warming, buttery ‘Ana’.
This is a showcase for the beauty of pure Scottish birch sap, hand-harvested each spring and inspiring this liqueur’s name (Ana is the Earth goddess of spring).
This magical natural ingredient is used in production – reduced to a syrup before being blended with sumptuous caramel made with rich Scottish cream and butter. Seasoned with premium spirit, this gorgeous mix is then triple-filtered to create the smooth, sweet and vibrant liqueur.
Ana’s perfectly balanced sweetness makes it the ideal sipper to round off a cold winter’s evening. It comes into its own at the dinner table to drizzle onto puddings or over vanilla ice-cream in an espresso glass for an Ana Affogato. A favourite cocktail is the Caramel Espresso Mart-ana: shake 50ml of Ana, 25ml of coffee liqueur and 35ml of fresh coffee in a cocktail shaker with ice. Serve in a chilled martini glass.
About Buck & Birch
Buck & Birch are wilderness spirits pioneers. Founded in 2016, this Scottish based team of nature lovers, foragers and flavour innovators is known for creating exceptional drinks that celebrate the wonders of the wild and the incredible ingredients nature has to offer.
Led by a spirit of exploration and defying drinks industry norms, each product in their award-winning range takes inspiration from a walk in the woods… and the founders’ love of the flavourful saps, plants, barks and berries that lie within. Only natural ingredients and sustainable, traditional extraction techniques are used to gently refine their products, to give an authentic ‘taste of the wild’ in every bottle.
Company founders Tom Chisholm and former chef Rupert Waites first worked together on a series of wild and foraged supper clubs in Edinburgh. When they couldn’t find the perfect after-dinner digestif to round off the evening, they simply created their own: the award-winning Buck & Birch liqueurs.
All Buck & Birch liqueurs are available to buy from buckandbirch.com and select specialist retailers