In a quick recap, I was invited to do a bit of city crawl with Jody Francis, the Brand Ambassador for Inverroche, discovering the brand’s new Liqueur range, some of the best venues the Mother City has to offer, and taking a closer look at the home of Inverroche.
Notably, Inverrocche takes great pride in honouring their staff as contributes to the brand, and what it stands for. I would just like to draw attention to two major key players at the distillery; Andre Rautenbach – who performs the mammoth task as the Master Distiller; and Dr J. C. De Vynck – who is the Creative Brand Custodian.
Andre, who joined the Inverroche family in 2015, spent many years in the Klein Karoo specializing in medicinal plants. His skill set in understanding the sensitivity of medicinal plants aided Inverroche in creating the layers of unique and exquisite flavour profiles in all of their products. His day-to-day seems quite complex as he orchestrates the extraction of special fynbos plants and the other botanicals which form the base of the Inverroche product range.
The Doctor, with way to many accomplishments to mention within a single paragraph, has resided in the Still Bay area since 1996. He has spent countless hours discovering the Southern Cape, after obtaining his PhD he started his journey with Inverroche. He is currently working on an initiative with Lorna Scott to ensure the sustainability of Fynbos; Custodians of the Cape Floristic Region.
On to the final of the three masterpieces, without noticing, we swiftly moved on to the last of the liqueurs in the range; CafeCoco Rum Liqueur. Another taster was ordered of the Marmalade Liqueur and the career mixologist; Brent Perremore swiftly prepared The Coco Alexander featuring Inverroche’s expression of a coffee liqueur.
CafeCoco Rum Liqueur
In case you were either completely unaware, or not lucky enough to have gotten your hands on a bottle while it was still available; Inverroche also distills Rum – the first locally produced aged rum to be more specific (Psst…I was told there is a limited release of a Limestone ten-year-old rum which will become available at the end of March 2019). The last of the unbottled Blackstrap seven-year-old rum was infused with whole oranges, cacao and coffee beans and sweetened with Fynbos honey and nectar of agave.
I did a comparative tasting with a commercially available coffee liqueur and the result was unanimously in favour of the CafeCoco. The perfect blend of bitter, natural sweetness and the smokey notes from the aged Rum base lend to the light complexity of the liqueur. A nose full of roasted coffee beans, maple tobacco and old leather is prominent, followed by a less dominant finish of vanilla and hot chocolate. You can expect sun-dried raisins, toasted walnuts and burnt caramel to turn your taste buds into a proverbial playground, before settling into a dark chocolate, sweet orange and strong espresso finish.
The Coco Alexander
Ingredients
25ml Inverroche CafeCoco Rum Liqueur
25ml Creme de Cacao
25ml Cognac
37.5ml Pouring cream
Shaken served straight up and garnished with grated nutmeg and brandied spiced cherries.
A journey of discovery came to an end. As we shook hands and parted ways, I could not help but admire the experience I had endeavoured on. The pure passion, dedication and commitment in creating an experience which can leave a consumer in awe. While being environmentally conscious and bio-friendly Inverroche Liqueurs are packed full of flavour and extremely user-friendly!
The Inverroche team are working on other interesting new concepts for future products.
Art of Duplicity
@Rusty3piece
#Artofduplicity
