You have to be 18 or over to look round a drinks site in the UK. It is the law rather than us being funny about it.
Mardle is a fictional brand built as a concept site by Fox Line Studio
Five proper cocktails, mixed and canned twelve miles from the sea. Two hundred and fifty millilitres. No shaker, no sticky worktop, no argument about whose round it is.
Drag, or use the arrow keys
Shingle Spritz
mardle
/ˈmɑːd(ə)l/verbSuffolk, and a bit of Norfolk
To sit and talk for far longer than you meant to. Usually outside. Usually with something cold in your hand.
Every village round here has a green, a pond and a bench nobody remembers putting there. At some point somebody sat on it, started a conversation and lost the whole afternoon to it. That is a mardle. We put the word on the can because it is what the can is for.
We started in 2023 with a hired canning line, a draughty barn on the Framlingham road and eight hundred kilos of rhubarb a grower could not shift. Six hundred cans came off that first run. They went in a fortnight, mostly to people we knew, which is a low bar, but we took it.
Three years on we make five. Each one is a full cocktail: real spirit, real fruit, carbonated cold and sealed within the hour.
Every one is mixed to a proper recipe and canned at 3°C so the carbonation holds. Fruit comes from growers we can drive to inside an hour. Pour it over ice and it behaves like something a bartender handed you.
5.4 % abv
Sharp and orange, nearer a bitter marmalade than a squash. The buckthorn grows wild on the shingle up past Sizewell, which is about the only place round here it turns up in any quantity, and it fights back a bit when you pick it.
How to serve it
Cold, in a tumbler, with a wedge of grapefruit if you have one and nothing at all if you have not.
5.0 % abv
Forced rhubarb out of a shed in the Fens, lemon sorrel picked in May while it is still sour enough to matter. It tastes like a garden, which is where most of them get drunk.
How to serve it
Over a lot of ice, with mint if the pot on the step has survived the summer.
7.2 % abv
The strong one. Hedgerow damsons steeped eight weeks, then bittered until it argues back. Somebody always opens one at eleven o'clock and regrets the timing rather than the drink.
How to serve it
Small glass, one big cube, a strip of orange peel bent over the top. Sip it.
5.8 % abv
Whole cone hops from a field near Stowmarket, dropped in cold so they stay green and resinous instead of going bready. Grapefruit does the rest of the work.
How to serve it
Salt round the rim if you are showing off in front of someone. It does not need it.
4.8 % abv
The long one, built to last a whole conversation rather than a course. Sloes go in after the first frost, once they stop being quite so cruel about it.
How to serve it
Tall glass, ice to the top, a fat wedge of lemon. Top it up with soda if you are pacing yourself.
Open it, tip it over ice, sit down. We have timed it: eleven seconds.
Three questions and we will put one in your hand.
Answer all three
Pick one from each row and we will land on a can. Change your mind as often as you like.
Everything is mixed, carbonated and canned at the unit at Nettle Green, on the Framlingham road. Three of us, one line, about four thousand cans a week when the weather behaves and rather fewer when it does not.
The cans are aluminium, so they get recycled endlessly and come back as a can in roughly six weeks. Trays are card. There is no plastic anywhere in the pack, including the bit that holds the four together.
Buckthorn off the shingle at Sizewell. Rhubarb from a grower outside Ely. Damsons and sloes out of hedges between Debenham and Eye, picked by whoever is free that week and paid by the kilo. Hops from a field near Stowmarket. The grapefruit is the one thing that gets on a boat.
We buy the whole crop when it is ready rather than a fixed amount every month, so the run sizes move about a bit. If a flavour is out, that is usually why.
Nothing there yet
We have not got that far. Ask your local to stock us and we will drop a sample box in, or tell us where you are and we will put it on the run.
Tell us where you areWe deliver to pubs, farm shops, delis and festivals across Suffolk and north Essex ourselves, in our own van, usually inside four working days. Minimum order is two cases of twelve.
Sample boxes are free to trade. Tell us roughly where you are and what you sell and we will drop one in next time we are out that way.
Or ring the unit on 01728 000 000, Monday to Thursday
Sent
| Can | ABV | Units |
|---|---|---|
| Shingle Spritz | 5.4% | 1.35 |
| Garden Collins | 5.0% | 1.25 |
| Dusk Negroni | 7.2% | 1.8 |
| Field Paloma | 5.8% | 1.45 |
| Hedgerow Highball | 4.8% | 1.2 |
All five are. Nothing in the range is fined with isinglass and there is no honey, dairy or egg white anywhere near the line.
None of the fourteen declarable allergens appear in any of the five. There is no barley and no wheat, so nothing in the range carries gluten. The Field Paloma contains hops, which people sometimes assume means beer. It does not.
Twelve months from canning, stamped on the base. After that it will not hurt you, it will just taste tired and flatter than it should.
Cases of twelve go anywhere in mainland Britain for £4.95, free over £60. Age is checked on the doorstep, so somebody over 18 has to be in to sign for it.
Yes. Bar packs, chilled delivery on the morning, collection of the empties afterwards, and someone with a van who will stay if you want a hand. Ask through the trade form.
Because we buy fruit by the crop rather than by the month. When the damsons are done, the Dusk Negroni is done, and it comes back in September.