All The Bitter Orange Cardamom (60 mL)

Carly and Ian Blessing met working as sommeliers at The French Laundry in the Napa Valley. They married, had two sons eighteen months apart, and stopped drinking. When the pandemic closed restaurants, Ian was taking real-estate classes at home and finding he did not care about any of it.

What he did care about was what was appearing on the non-alcoholic shelf. Bitters were the gap — the ones that existed were alcohol-based, so a bitters-and-soda or an Old Fashioned stayed out of reach. The first batches were made in mason jars in their kitchen.

They still make it by hand in small batches in Chico, California, from raw dried herbs that are organic or wild-foraged, with no flavorings of any kind. Emails and messages still go straight to the two of them.