One of the more frequent questions we’re asked is, is Nunc organic?
Like many things, the answer isn't simple. Technically, yes our drinks are organic, however officially our drinks aren't organic. Bear with us while we explain.
Being organic is important to us, however it isn’t a simple case of buying organic ingredients.
First and foremost, our priority when brewing our drinks is the flavour. When it comes to brewing our drinks there are a few things that are sacrosanct, regardless of the cost: Taste, Goodness, and keeping it real.
The fact is, just because an ingredient is organic doesn’t mean it is the most flavoursome. We’re passionate about making innovative, complex, progressive and exciting full flavour drinks, which means we will never purchase an ingredient simply because it is organic if it is to the detriment of the taste. Don’t misunderstand though, we spend hours and hours searching for alternative ingredients that are organic and equally tasty.
When selecting our ingredients we also take into account “food miles”. In an ideal world we would source all our ingredients locally, but in reality that isn’t possible. There has been a few occasions where we found an organic ingredient but the food miles were excessive, so we made the choice of using a non-organic ingredient with fewer food miles.
And then there is the elephant in the room…
The legal, regulations, red tape, whatever you want to call it. Because we ferment our drinks using only raw honey from beehives within five miles of our fermentery (including our own) we do not know where the bees are gathering their pollen and nectar from, therefore our honey can not be categorised as organic. We could buy organic honey from another country, but then we have no idea how the bees have been treated, and by using local honey, not only are we supporting other small businesses, we can categorically say the honey we’re using is raw, unpasteurised, unsterilised, undiluted, and it tastes amazing. And very important, we also know the honey has never been heated above bee hive temperature so none of the goodness in the honey has been lost.
Now, with all that said, according to the UK Soil Association, to be certified organic 95% of the ingredients used in a product need to be organic – and guess what? Over 95% of the ingredients we use in our flavours are organic. So we could be classified as organic.
So why aren’t we organic? Well, it costs money and as we are a small business, money is tight. So, whilst being organic is important to us, we do have other priorities right now, but please be rest assured, it is on our road map for our drinks to be certified as organic.
Whenever possible we will use organic ingredients, but it is not always possible. Rest assured we will continue to search for the organic equivalent, and we will never sacrifice the taste of our drinks.
We take pride handcrafting Nunc and we want it to be the best it can be. We’re crafting a new experience