Gabriel Boudier is a 150-year-old firm from Dijon, France, perhaps best known for its cassis. Its full product catalog is a stimulating journey through the possibilities of flavor in spirits, ranging from fruits and coffee to chocolate, turmeric, lime leaf, and even rhubarb. Now, its American importer has just launched the latest addition to their lineup: a liqueur made with seaweed called Liqueur de Nori.
Gabriel Boudier makes Liqueur de Nori from two kinds of seaweed: nori (Porphyra umbilicalis, also called laver) and dulse (Palmaria palmata), a dark red seaweed that has long been consumed in the North Atlantic. Both are wild harvested from the coast of Brittany, France.
After drying for 24 hours, each seaweed is separately infused into beet neutral spirit for three weeks. The distillers add grapefruit distillate and lime juice and finally cold infuse sugar into the spirit to balance the umami-forward seaweed. The final product is full of the expected aromas — it smells like opening a package of nori while making sushi rolls — but the flavor is an unexpected combination of deep umami flavor highlighted by citric acidity and a pronounced roundness.
While Gabriel Boudier has a reputation for creativity, Liqueur de Nori is the result of an individual bartender’s imagination. Every year Gabriel Boudier hosts the Wizard Awards in the U.K. and challenges bartenders to create an innovative spirit. The winner receives a cash prize and their recipe is developed into a product for Gabriel Boudier.
Nori was the 2019/2020 winner, created by Matthew Cusworth, a bartender at Edinburgh’s Hoot the Redeemer. It is just now being introduced across the United States by BCI Bonneté. Gabriel Boudier worked closely with Cusworth to adapt his small-batch liquor for a larger scale and even engaged his sister, Becca Boyce, to design the embossed label which features the purples, reds, and greens of these seaweeds.
This Nori was clearly designed to bring more umami into cocktails. Gabriel Boudier has seen it used in a variety of contexts in Europe, especially in coastal or seafood-focused bars where it offers a new accent to daiquiris and martinis. Other bartenders are finding a place for its mix of brine, citrus, sugar, and umami as a complement to Scotch cocktails.
