The Hard to Find, and Otherwise Weird Ingredients

I’m still working on my full-fledged “cocktail geek” status, but I’m starting to get into making my own syrups. Nothing too crazy at the moment, but I’m working on it! The Mixoloseum has a fantastic guest post by Chris Stanley about where you can source all of the weird ingredients to make all sorts of funky syrups and fun tinctures.

Chris lists all of my usual haunts – farmer’s markets, ethnic grocery stores and alternative or whole foods markets. What Chris did list, that aren’t usual haunts for me, were several different sites around the wild wild interwebs that offer several different options that every good cocktail geek craves.

The ones that piqued my interest the most were:

• Tenzing Momo – A brick & mortar apothecary shop based out of the Pike Place market in Seattle, WA. This simple webpage conceals a great resource for some especially rare ingredients – one of the only vendors I know to carry Cinchona (for Tonic water) for example. Prices will appear especially low – be warned that this is due to quantities – as near as I can tell, each herb/spice item is sold in 1-ounce increments, so adjust an order accordingly. [I'm just up the road from Seattle - I will be checking this out the next time we're there!]
• Auntie Arwen’s – An apothecary & herbalist, Arwen’s carries a selection of herbs, roots, flora, spices & extracts. Their true specialty, however, lies in crafting specialized blends of these – often on a custom/to-order basis. Need a ‘Mango-white Pepper-Grains of Paradise’ blend? Arwen’s has you covered…[cool!]
• Forgotten Flavors – A German company (webpage is in German) who commercially produces a pair of hard-to-find cocktail ingredients – Falernum syrup & Swedish Punsch. Quality seems to be their main concern, so if you’d rather not make either ingredient yourself, give theirs a go. [ok, now I just need someone to read German for me]

The rest of Chris’s fine finds are here. Have you discovered a niche spot for some of your more random finds?

(image courtesy of Exfordy on Twitter under CC)