Saint Germain Liqueur de Sureau - Elderflower

St-Germain has a genuinely unlikely origin story for a liqueur now considered a bartending essential. In the early 2000s, third-generation distiller Robert Cooper sampled an elderflower cocktail at a London bar and decided to create his own version — against the explicit doubts of his own father, Norton "Sky" Cooper, the same man behind Chambord, who reportedly told him, "I'll hire you back in a year when you fail."

Launched in 2007, St-Germain is made from up to a thousand handpicked elderflower blossoms per bottle, harvested during a brief spring blooming window in France. The liqueur takes its golden hue naturally from the flowers' own pollen, with no artificial colouring, delivering delicate notes of pear, peach, and citrus.

Often called "bartender's ketchup" for how well it pairs with nearly anything — try it in a St-Germain Spritz with Champagne and soda water.