Seedlip founder opens non-alc distillery Sylva

Ben Branson has opened Sylva, a non-alcoholic distillery and maturation laboratory, at his home in Essex in the UK.

The lab is part of Pollen Projects, a venture studio that Branson launched last year. Led by Branson and Jack Wareing, Pollen Projects’ head of research and development, Sylva will create luxury dark spirits with an ABV of less than 0.5%. The lab extracts ‘the complex character from a diverse selection of wood and cereals’ to create non-alcoholic products. The brand claims it explores ‘the full flavour potential of traditional barrel wood and grain varieties as well as trees never before used in drinks’, using techniques including sonic maturation, vacuum distillation and vacuum kiln roasting. Its first release, Padauk, is made from the eponymous West African wood, which has a reddish-orange bark and ‘aromatic pungency’. Red oak from the lab’s forest and American oak barrel staves from Nc’nean in Scotland are also used. The wood is complemented with rye, which undergoes malted rye extraction, toasted rye vacuum distillation, and gravity percolation. “I come from a family of grain growers, woodworkers, inventors and timber merchants, so Sylva is a very special project both personally and professionally,” said Branson. “I am excited to celebrate wood’s unique and diverse flavours by championing innovative extraction and maturation techniques so we can break new ground on what dark non-alcoholic spirits can be.” Padauk is priced at £40 (US$52) per 500ml bottle and will be available to pre-order from 12 September, with bottles shipped from November.