Summergate takes on Fever-Tree

Hong Kong’s fine wine merchant Summergate has just announced it has become the exclusive distributor of tonic water brand, Fever-Tree.

Primarily targeted at the on-trade, Summergate will carry the whole range of the 200ml bottles which encompass varying flavours including, Indian Tonic Water, Light Tonic Water, Mediterranean Tonic Water, Elderflower Tonic Water, Cola, Ginger Ale and Ginger Beer.

Fever-Tree was established by Charles Ross who ran Plymouth Gin, and food marketer, Tim Warrilow and together they embarked on creating a mixer which used only natural ingredients and quality sources of quinine and the first tonic water was launched in the UK in 2005.

Quinine comes from the bark of the Cinchona plant – which is colloquially called fever tree owing to quinine’s anti-malarial properties – and Ross and Warrilow discovered the highest quality coming from the Rwanda/Congo border.

Mixed with eight botanical flavours, including marigold extracts and bitter orange from Tanzania, Fever-Tree contains no preservatives and artificial flavours and since the first iteration, Ross and Warrilow have launched six other flavours.

Over the last five years, Hong Kong’s interest in gin has piqued, with numerous specialist gin bars opening around the city, but it has always had a fondness for a good G&T with the British even naming an area in the New Territories Gin Drinkers’ Bay.

Its corresponding Gin Drinkers’ Line was also a British military defensive line against the Japanese during the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941.