Welcome to the Alvearium Gin Guide
Use this guide to confidently introduce Alvearium Gin to your customers and guests, ensuring every sip comes with a story worth sharing.
This guide is designed to help you understand, appreciate, and share the story of Alvearium Gin. Whether you’re a bartender, game ranger, or simply a spirits enthusiast, this resource will give you insights into its origins, unique production process, and the best ways to serve and enjoy it. You’ll learn about Alvearium’s deep connection to African mead-making traditions, its commitment to sustainability, and how it can elevate the drinking experience in any setting.
Quick reference highlights:
The boxes below provide essential information about Alvearium Gin, giving you the key talking points to confidently introduce and sell it to your clients.
Pronunciation
Al-vair-ee-um: Derived from the Latin word for “beehive”.
Our name reflects the gin’s deep connection to honey and sustainable beekeeping.
Flavour profile
Style: London Dry Gin
Aroma: Juniper berry & citrus
Palate: Smooth, layered with juniper, citrus and cardamom
Key selling points
✔ First Gin Distilled From Mead – Distilled entirely from Zambian honey and water, supporting ethical beekeeping and ecosystem conservation.
✔ The World’s Most Sustainable Gin – It has a 95% smaller ecological footprint than other gins.
✔ Proudly Zambian – Made in Zambia with 100% Zambian honey.
Contents
To use this guide, simply click on each section below to expand and explore the content at your own pace.
How to pronounce Alvearium: Al-vair-ee-um
Derived from the Latin word for “beehive,” Alvearium reflects the gin’s deep connection to honey and sustainable beekeeping.
Not All Gin Is Created Equal!
Alvearium Gin is a revolution in distilling—born from ancient mead-making traditions and crafted into a one-of-a-kind honey-distilled gin. Proudly produced in Zambia from 100% Zambian honey, this spirit has sustainability at its core and a legacy that connects past and present.
Key Selling Points
✔ The World’s Most Sustainable Gin – Distilled entirely from Zambian honey and water, supporting ethical beekeeping and ecosystem conservation.
✔ Proudly Zambian – Made in Zambia with 100% Zambian honey, celebrating the country’s natural richness and craftsmanship.
✔ A Story in Every Sip – A spirit rooted in African history and traditions, bridging past and present.
✔ Premium Quality & Craftsmanship – Small-batch distilled for exceptional smoothness and depth.
What is Mead?
Mead is one of humanity’s oldest fermented beverages, made from honey, water, and yeast. Enjoyed for thousands of years across cultures, it carries a rich tradition of craftsmanship and community. Read more about the origin of mead in African Stories of Mead Part 1.
From Mead to Alvearium Gin
Alvearium Gin transforms the ancient essence of mead into something truly innovative. Using a triple distillation process, we extract the purest spirit from mead, combining it with hand-selected botanicals to create a gin unlike any other. To achieve a balanced and sophisticated profile, the distilled mead is infused with a carefully selected blend of botanicals, featuring aromatic spices and citrus. The result is a crisp, refreshing gin with a delicate, lingering warmth, offering both complexity and indulgence in every sip.
How Alvearium is Made
Tasting Notes
- Style: London Dry Gin
- Aroma: Juniper berry & citrus
- Palate: Smooth, layered with juniper, citrus and cardamom
Serving Suggestions
- The perfect safari sundowner!
- Neat or on the Rocks – Serve chilled on ice to appreciate its complexity.
- Classic G&T – Enhances its botanical depth with a premium tonic and a twist of citrus or freshen it up with a slice of cucumber.
- The Bee’s Knees Cocktail – The Bee’s Knees is a simple yet elegant cocktail that enhances the spirit’s citrus notes. Find the recipe below!
How to Introduce Alvearium Gin to Your Establishment
Alvearium Gin isn’t just a drink—it’s an experience. Here’s how it can enhance your bar, lodge, or establishment:
- Curate a Unique Experience – Highlight Alvearium Gin on your menu as a premium (and if based in Zambia, local) offering, emphasising its story and sustainability.
- Craft Signature Welcome Cocktail – Develop exclusive drinks using Alvearium Gin to intrigue and delight customers.
- Safari Sundowner – Serve an icy Alvearium G&T with a story during a bush sundowner experience. Stories are included in this guide below!
- Tell the Story – Train your staff with key talking points about the history, sustainability, and craftsmanship behind each bottle.
- Themed Tasting Events – Host Alvearium tasting nights or pairing dinners to create an immersive experience.
- Showcase Sustainability – Align with eco-conscious customers by emphasising the gin’s commitment to ethical production and nature conservation.
Redefining the Alcohol Industry
Our passion lies in redefining the alcohol industry with sustainability at the core, ensuring that every sip contributes to both heritage and environmental preservation.
Unlike conventional wines and grain-based spirits our mead-derived gin:
- Has a 95% smaller ecological footprint than conventional gins.
- Is crafted entirely from pure African honey sourced from untouched, carbon-rich forests.
- By working directly with local honey farmers, we not only support livelihoods but also help safeguard the Miombo woodlands, where wild bees flourish.
- Beekeeping plays a crucial role in incentivising sustainable forest management, offering an alternative to deforestation-driven livelihoods and agriculture.
Honey production is inherently eco-friendly—honeybees are essential pollinators, sustaining biodiversity and maintaining healthy ecosystems. By fostering responsible honey harvesting, we help protect bee populations, ensuring the preservation of plant and animal life across these vital landscapes.
Beyond its impact on biodiversity, Alvearium Gin actively contributes to forest conservation. The honey we source comes from indigenous African forests with high carbon sequestration potential, meaning that every bottle consumed helps conserve 25m² of forest for an entire year, preventing it from being cleared for agriculture.
We truly believe that sustainability and craftsmanship go hand in hand—creating a spirit that not only tastes exceptional but also leaves a lasting positive impact on the planet.
See how many trees and beekeepers have benefitted from Alvearium production to date: click here!
Supporting Communities & Eco-Systems
For thousands of years, beekeeping has supported both ecosystems and communities. Today, Kenyan top-bar hives offer a sustainable approach, allowing wild bee colonies to thrive naturally while producing honey in a controlled, eco-friendly way.
In the Miombo woodlands, where the environment remains largely untouched by industrial agriculture, these hives provide a regenerative alternative to traditional honey collection. By mimicking natural hive structures, they promote biodiversity, enhance pollination, and ensure responsible honey production without disturbing delicate ecosystems.
We ensure that every drop of honey in our gin is ethically sourced, sustainably harvested, and deeply connected to conservation, preserving both the environment and the communities that depend on it.
Create an Immersive Experience for Guests
Game rangers have a unique opportunity to enhance their guests’ safari experience by incorporating Alvearium Gin into their sundowner rituals. As the sun dips below the horizon, serving this honey-distilled gin allows for a storytelling moment that blends history, ecology, and culture.
Rangers can share ancient African tales of mead as the drink of warriors, kings, and sacred ceremonies, or highlight the remarkable partnership between humans and the honeyguide bird—a species known for leading people to wild beehives in exchange for honeycomb.
By weaving these narratives into the sundowner experience, rangers not only offer a world-class gin but also create a deeper connection between guests, the land, and its rich traditions.
Learn about the stories that can be told below in the “African Stories of Mead” section of the guide.
Centuries ago, in Africa, particularly wet summer rainfall has caused the hollow of a Baobab tree to flood. Not just any baobab however, one that was once the refuge to a colony of bees. You see, I speak of the days when elephants would roam freely across the vast African plains. As they grazed on the flourishing flora, they tore away large branches from the trees while getting to the delicious fruit far above. This in turn caused weak points that over time, would hollow out.
Unwittingly they created a perfect shelter wherein the buzzing bees could nestle their hives. When the summer rains came and slowly filled up the hollows, the hives would flood with water. As the days passed a high-sugar environment was created by the honey and osmotolerant yeast began to thrive. Slowly as this cocktail began to ferment a delicious mead was created, known in the San language as !karri.
Long before extravagant getaways and tropical escapes, the honeymoon was something far more symbolic—rooted in the ancient tradition of mead.
In centuries past, newlyweds were gifted enough mead to last an entire lunar cycle, a gesture meant to bring good fortune, prosperity, and a sweet beginning to their life together. This golden elixir, made from pure honey, was believed to foster love, happiness, and fertility, making it an essential part of wedding celebrations. The term itself traces back to Old English—“hony moone”, a reference to the tradition of drinking mead for a full month after the wedding. Over time, this evolved into what we now call the honeymoon, a period of romance and new beginnings.
Though the rituals may have changed, the sentiment remains. A sip of mead today is more than just a drink—it’s a nod to an age-old tradition, a toast to love, and a reminder that some things, like honey and happily ever after’s, are timeless.
The Greater Honeyguide, scientific name Indicator indicator, does exactly as his name describes and facilitates the rare behaviour of human and animal mutualism. Many African tribes and honey-hunters summon this large bird using a unique call. The honeyguide, answering the call flies ahead in the direction of the largest beehive it could find to present it to the humans.
Honeyguides have large olfactory glands allowing them to use smell as an advantage in locating beehives. Upon finding, smoking out the bees and raiding the hive, hunters would then gift the honeyguide some leftover wax as a token of gratitude for its service.
Bees and their honey play a significant role in the lives of the Khoi and San in their creation stories. One such story begins with the trickster deity, /Kaggen, often appearing as a praying mantis in the stories of the /Xam bushmen of Southern Africa. Believed to have created the mighty Eland from a piece of his sandal, /Kaggen would seek out a beehive every day and cut honey to feed the growing animal.
Eland spends the days in the reeds, appearing only when his creator calls after having laid out the honeycomb on a stone. By caring for the growing Eland /Kaggen stops finding honey for his family, who grow suspicious and jealous. One day when the deity is out hunting for honeycomb, the family slays the Eland. When /Kaggen finds a beehive, it is not fat but dry, and it seems as though red blood has taken the place of the honey. This is the moment the trickster deity realises his family’s betrayal.
Connections exist between honey and many animals in the stories of the Khoi and San people. /Kaggen, would feed each of his creations with different parts of a beehive, thus believed to determine their colours.
The Gemsbok was fed with the ‘!Khou //Kie !kuita’, which roughly translates to “bee liquid that is white” and means liquid honey.
The Hartbees received its dark red colours because it was fed ‘//Ka’ which means “comb of young bees” and signifies brood comb and by nature has a dark brown/red colour.
The springbok has light honey-brown tones with a white underbelly. This is achieved from being fed ‘//ki’ meaning “little bees” and it implies the larvae, which when chewed produces a white like substance.
Archaeologists used acoustic methods to study a rock painting in South Africa’s Cederberg Mountains, initially thought to depict healers with fly-whisks in a trance-dance. However, their research revealed that the fly-whisks were actually musical instruments called !goin !goin, which create sound when spun around their axes.
The instrument was used over 2000 years ago based on the age of the painting, and it generated a distinct pulsating sound. When multiple !goin !goin were played together, they offered compositional possibilities, producing layered musical creations. The instrument’s sound was associated with rain and honeybees, used by both men and women for rainmaking purposes.
Figure reference – A section of the Cederberg rock painting, digitally enhanced to emphasise red-ochreous colours. © Neil Rusch
Zambia
A large portion of the honey produced in Zambia is used to make Wala wa ndoka and Wala wa kasolu meads. These raise the status of the beekeeper when they are served at social gatherings and are used as currency for barter. An essential part of this brewing process is the addition of brood and pollen to the mix which is then placed into a calabash and sealed to ferment. Sweet beer is also a popular local beverage in Zambia called Mulava/Mulaba. Its ingredients include, maize, mead, water, honey and the roots of a perennial herb shrub – Rhynchosia Insignis. Zambia falls inside the historical region where Khoi-San added roots to their mead recipes, this in turn still influences recipes in Zambia today.
Angola
In the southern Angolan baobab savannah, the hives which were built by bees during the dry seasons inside the baobab trunks fermented once the rains came and the contents began to rot. This resulted in a fermented honey wine discovered by the Khoi-San. At a later stage the San hunters (working for the SANDF) also enjoyed coming across these on their journeys.
Kenya
The Kenyan recipe for mead includes honeycomb with brood and pollen, and loofah fruits (genus luffa). These fruits are there to inoculate the yeast and are dried between batches. Kenya’s honey and mead production, geographically falls closest to the most northern Khoi-San range, which dates back 10 000 years.
Botswana
Mead is known to have a cultural significance in Botswana and the hives near the urban areas are often cleared out due to high demand for the beverage. In the Kgalagadi trans frontier park (across Botswana and South Africa) the San people made their mead with Honey, a mix of various herbs and parts of the nests from social weaver birds. These nests are large structures made of grass and contain grain-filled dung. There is however, little research and record on the size of Botswana’ local mead production.
Ethiopia
Bees have a deep cultural significance in Ethiopia, making an appearance in their national anthem – “…Ethiopia land of our fathers the land where our God wants to be like bees to a hive swiftly gather…”. Ethiopia is the largest honey producer in Africa, with an annual production of 24 000 metric tons stemming from 10 million managed beehives. 80% of the total honey production is converted to mead. Tej or Mies (the local name for mead) includes a herb called Gesho (Rhamnus Prinoides) which is added during the fermentation process. This herb is specifically cultivated as a commercial crop and used for added flavour in the Tej, and once it has been used the remains are fed to the donkeys.
Tanzania
In Tanzania mead holds great cultural significance and is required at every ceremony. Gourds believed to carry ancestral brewing wisdom are passed down through generations. Local custom ensures beeswax is not removed from the beverage and brood and pollen are added to strengthen it as well as invigorate the yeast.
There are two primary meads made in Tanzania, namely Besuda from the Baraig tribe, and Ganguli and Xangay from the Iraqw tribes (Xangay being a beer which is further mixed with honey much like a Braggot). The honey in Tanzania is sold in the comb, which means there are no beeswax sales from which to accurately estimate the quantity of mead produced throughout the country. However, the hives have a much higher output than those in northern Zambia meaning their mead production would be much larger.
South Africa
The first to create and establish mead making techniques were the Khoi-San in Africa. Their recipes, like the techniques still used in the Eastern Cape of South Africa today included roots of Imoela/Karimoer (Trichodiadema plant), Honey, Brood and pollen extracts, water and occasionally different seasonal fruits as additional sugar and taste sources. The Eastern Cape has the largest measure of Indigenous Knowledge Systems of ancient mead making practices. Here they prepare the Trichodiadema root through four different wash cycles and once dried, it is called Imoela and is ready for brewing.
The Bee’s Knees
A timeless classic that highlights the honey origins of Alvearium Gin, The Bee’s Knees is a simple yet elegant cocktail that enhances the spirit’s floral and citrus notes.
Ingredients:
- 60ml Alvearium Gin (double shot)
- 30ml Fresh lemon juice
- 30ml Honey syrup (equal parts honey and warm water, mixed)
- Ice
- Lemon twist (for garnish)
Method:
- Shake all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker until ice frosts on the outside of the shaker.
- Pour into a chilled coupe glass.
- Garnish with a lemon twist.
A perfectly balanced, refreshing cocktail that allows the honey-distilled essence of Alvearium Gin to shine.
Tracking Our Impact
Distilling Alvearium spirit from mead means it is made from sustainably sourced honey, actively contributing to the environment and the community through supporting responsible beekeeping. By promoting local honey trade and forest conservation, our efforts support local ecosystems while reducing reliance on environmentally harmful agricultural practices. The calculator below reflects the impact of our initiatives to date, reinforcing our commitment to sustainability.