Our Champagne Kombucha is here for the holiday season. It's brewed by fermenting only organic green tea and honey with a special bacteria colony that makes it very dry, bubbly and delicious, just like a Champagne (but without the hangover)!
You can fill up with Champagne Kombucha at Market Collective December 16-18 and at Bridgeland Market starting December 22.
We've partnered up with our favourite local honey for this special flavour, and we want to highlight what this great company is up to!
Tell us how Drizzle started...
Drizzle got its start while I was doing Agriculture and Culinary research at SAIT Polytechnic in 2013. We received a grant to work alongside a beekeeping group based out of Calgary to focus on rooftop beekeeping and beekeeping in urban environments. We looked at all sorts of things like the quality and quantity of honey that you can get off urban hives verse rural hives. We were looking to see whether or not you could use urban hives for commercial use.
We checked the quality of honey that we got off the urban hives in comparison to hives made in traditional settings and found that there is the potential to produce more honey because of warmer, stable temperatures.
While doing that I fell in love with honey. I got to know the industry and lots of the beekeepers in the province. In 2015 I took the plunge and started Drizzle.
Does Alberta have a honey industry?
Alberta is the highest producing honey province in Canada and our honey is some of the best in the world. On the market, we get a premium price for our honey produced here.
What makes honey good honey?
A bunch of different things. You can measure honey on the floral source, the texture, the colour; our honey is really light, especially when creamed. Honey in its natural state can come in all colours and flavours depending on the season and location which gets masked in the commercial honey world. At Drizzle we wanted to represent something different, transparency is a huge part of what we do.
Expanding on that, what did you want Drizzle to represent, how did you want it to be different?
In addition to transparency, sustainability was important to us. No one was actively saying they were sustainable in the honey industry so we try to do what we can to reduce our footprint. Everything from our packaging to how we ship out is considered.
So where does Drizzle honey come from?
The retail line comes from Northern Alberta. I used to do it myself in the city; we had backyard hives and the rooftop hives. The rooftop hives feed honey into the SAIT Culinary School, it's a real farm to fork program that not a lot of people know about.
I chose the hives in Northern Alberta after intensively testing honey from around they world, they produced the best honey I could find. It's largely based on the organic floral fields that support the hives up there.
Where can you find Drizzle?
Rosso, Juice Because, Plant, Greater Goods ... you can find the full list here.
What is the next step with Drizzle?
We just got into a a local venture program. Drizzle Honey and 10 other companies are working to grow their businesses. It's an intensive program that gets your company in front of stores, distribution, working on potentially getting you over the border.
The vision would be to add more products to the Drizzle line up, different types of honey, potentially a skincare line, the sky is the limit really.
Aside from collaborating with True Buch for our Champagne Kombucha, what other collaborations do you have in the city?
Our honey is in a blend with Juice Because, Bark YYC does honey and pumpkin dog treats, and Wild Prairie Botanicals does a honeysuckle face mask. I also supply honey to Last Best Brewery and Rosso Coffee Roasters.
What do you love about working in Calgary?
We have a growing local community movement happening here in Calgary, and Drizzle wanted to be a part of that. There is a lot of support here too, other companies are more than willing to help you out and that's really great.
This holiday season, don't forget to fill up your growlers with Champagne Kombucha made with Drizzle Honey. Happy holidays and cheers to you!
