A Tale of Two Bitters
The last few ingredients listed in a cocktail menu description are often overlooked or little understood, mysterious potions like “Angostura” or “orange bitters.” Most classic cocktails call for bitters—usually just a few drops, but essential to the flavor profile and overall drink experience. Two local companies, Warn Reserve and Ione, are creating and marketing small-batch aromatic bitters for bars and individuals.
“It’s like a seasoning, similar to adding salt and pepper to your steak,” said Melissa Wilson Nodzu, one half of the team behind Ione (i-oh-NEE) Bitters. “You add bitters to your drink and they enhance the existing flavors to make them better, without adding volume to the drink.”
In 2018, Adrienne and Danny Warn launched Warn Reserve. Nearly two dozen bars or shops now carry their bitters and many are crafting specialty cocktails around the ingredients.
“We started reading about what goes into a craft cocktail—a spirit, a sweetness, a sour and bitters—and we asked ourselves what exactly are bitters,” said Danny Warn. “Adrienne has an amazing palate and is able to pick out specific flavors, so we started trying to re-create those at home.”
The Warns used the food technology center at the University of Idaho’s Caldwell campus as a resource for food product training, but their real progress came from talking with bartenders.
“We would be sitting at Whiskey Bar and talking to bartenders and mention that we’re experimenting with bitters at home, and they said to bring it in and let them try it,” said Adrienne Warn. “That’s what really got our interest piqued, was when the bartenders were raving about it.”
The Warns use bourbon, rye whiskey and a grain alcohol for their different bitters, and in April bottled their fourth flavor, cherry, using Emmett cherries. That will join their lineup of aromatic, orange and coffee pecan bitters.
Bitters have a long history stretching back to the ancient Egyptians, and remained as a common medicinal ever since. The popular bitter Angostura was originally established in the early 1800s in Venezuela by an army surgeon general as a seasickness cure.
Briana Beford was already making digestive (constitutional) bitters when her soul-sister Nodzu suggested making cocktail bitters.
“All alcohol was derived medicinally at first, and [Ione] was based off constitution but we’ve morphed it into the cocktail realm,” said Beford. “Even if you’re drinking alcohol you should be gleaning the benefit from what you’re putting in your body, so they act like homeopathics—you’ll be able to pick up those micronutrients.”
Ione is very particular about everything that goes into a batch of bitters. Every ingredient in their seasonal bitters is either grown themselves, grown by friends or foraged in Idaho. To cut down on potential allergens, they use potato vodka instead of a grain spirit.
Beford believes Ione also differs from other companies because, she says, each bottle of bitters is imbued with energy to align the body’s chakras. Before flavors are added in, the base spirit gets a separate infusion of moonlight and gemstones.
The vodka is put into 64-ounce glass jars along with a bag containing seven different gemstones and left outside for an entire lunar phase—new, full, waning or waxing—depending on the end goal.
“When you think about new moons you think about new beginnings, new intentions, so tapping in to that you can invoke that in a person,” said Nodzu. “We’re really working at a subliminal level.”
Once “GranMama Moonlight” has done her thing, the extraction process begins, and bottles are filled with the right combination of ingredients and spirits. Ione has three base flavors— cherry, orange and aromatic whiskey bitters— and usually four seasonals with flavors like peachcot-basil or lemongrass and lilac. Ione bitters infuse for up to four months, and not a day goes by without Beford checking them.
“Every day I take those bottles and rotate them and move the material inside to make sure they get properly infused,” Beford said. “I spend a lot of time with these jars.”
Both companies are looking to expand their lineup and reach, but the ultimate goal is to create a product that will complement the craft of local bartenders, and that consumers will clamor to get their hands on.
“We’re just having fun,” said Danny Ward. “It’s really cool to go into a bar and have a drink that someone made with your product and just get blown away.”
Warn Reserve | @warnreserve
Ione | @ionebitters
University of Idaho
