LAUNCH | Floreat, a new English sparkling botanic wine made with over 300 therapeutic herbs and botanicals
Pioneering a new category of sophisticated sparkling botanic wines, Floreat has now launched to the UK market. Taking its name from the Latin term, meaning ‘let flourish’, Floreat is the brainchild of Anne-Marie Hurst, a qualified medical herbalist and former Diageo executive, who has united British expertise and craftsmanship to reinvent the tonic wine with wellness and the modern drinker in mind.
Addressing the global shift towards more mindful living and consumption, Floreat is uniquely crafted with a special blend of high-quality botanicals that have been thoughtfully handpicked by Anne-Marie for their therapeutic advantages as much as for their flavour. Bridging the worlds of wine and wellness, Floreat contains botanicals with benefits that range from anti-oxidants to cell regeneration for hair, nails and skin, to stress relief.
Moving beyond long-held drinks industry conventions, whereby botanical extracts are used primarily for the purpose of adding taste, Floreat creatively challenges standards to introduce a new, lower alcohol wine that optimizes socializing while unveiling the often-overlooked therapeutic benefits of herbs.
Floreat has its beginnings at Anne-Marie’s kitchen table at her home, Grade II-listed Trevella Manor in Cornwall. It was there that she mixed over 300 different herbs and botanicals with the aim of identifying a set that met her requirements: an appealing and modern flavour profile that simultaneously offers a broad range of desired benefits.
To take on the brilliant yet complex task of bringing this novel drink to life, Anne-Marie formed a specialized development team to supplement her own expertise. Fred Hollamby-Jones, a chemist and master tea-blender, focuses on ensuring the herbal constituents are protected during production, while mixologist and sommelier Andrew Mclean works to combine a variety of flavour profiles to create the desired end product.
Every sip of Floreat has been perfectly balanced through a unique, patented process that expertly combines, in therapeutic quantities, the best medical-grade herbs, vitamins and active botanicals with a Pinot Grigio from northern Italy. The herbs, all organic and produced biodynamically where possible, include violets, fresh rose petals, lime flowers and milk thistle seeds.
Each sip brings with it specific health benefits: from rose petals as an antidepressant and antioxidant, to milk thistle seeds as a digestive tonic that helps protect the liver, to lime flowers, recognized for treating anxiety and hypertension as well as the common cold. Vitamins C, B, E and zinc are also present for their respective mind- and mood-boosting properties.
The result is a light, bright, golden-coloured tipple that at just 5.4% ABV has mindful consumption at its heart. The nose is crisp and zesty, leading into delicate notes of gooseberry, floral blossom and melon. With a light perlage, Floreat is best served chilled, ideally to be enjoyed on its own.
Anne-Marie Hurst comments: “We are so pleased to bring our creative vision for Floreat to life and to address in a unique way people’s increasing desire to drink better. We passionately believe that wellness and alcohol are not mutually exclusive categories, but rather can be approached from an outlook whereby one complements the other. Floreat is the result of our tireless pursuit to establish a new way of drinking that optimizes socializing with added benefits to both the mind and body.”
Striking a new balance between health and hedonism, Floreat adds to life’s natural pleasures as the drink of choice for a revitalizing way to enjoy summer.
