Company Drinks

Picking season is nearly here, and we’re starting to notice the first wild flavours and flowers of spring. These pics show some of what’s around right now: violets, nettles, jack by the hedge, cleavers, bramble shoots and cherry blossom. Violets bring a soft, pretty splash of colour; nettles are one of the best-known spring greens; jack by the hedge has a fresh, mustardy edge; cleavers are a familiar sticky hedgerow plant; bramble shoots are young and tender at this time of year; and cherry blossom reminds us the season is shifting. A quick foraging reminder: only pick what you can identify with complete confidence, avoid polluted or sprayed areas, and never eat anything unless you are sure it is safe. If in doubt, leave it out. Our picking season is just beginning, so keep an eye on our newsletter for future picking dates. 🌿

Explore the Wild: Family Saturdays begins again tomorrow. Free family friendly activities. All children must be accompanied by an adult. 1-3pm. The themes for the upcoming sessions: Saturday 11th April - Rain Or Shine! (Sunshine and cloud-themed games - fun whatever the weather!) Saturday 25th April - Earth Day! (Celebrate our awesome planet with eco activities) Saturday 9th May - What a fun-gi! (Get messy (and inspired) with mushrooms and more) Saturday 23rd May - Bee Happy (Arts & Crafts inspired by our busy, buzzy friends for National Bee Day) Saturday 6th June - Go Fish! (For World Oceans Days we will be having some splishy, splashy fishy fun) Saturday 20th June - Summer Solstice Garden Party (Outdoor games ahoy for our sunny shindig) Book your place via our website, but also feel free to drop in. See you there! 🌳 🎨

Another brilliant week of our Explore the Wild HAF program. Thanks again to our facilitators: Lauren Russel @earth.ink.etc @tuck_shaun @sheyamali.s Gratitude for our Explore the Wild team: @kimberleycapero @michelle.pittoni @rsainsotr @kit.lovelock And always a massive thank you to @madeupcollective_ for feeding us all 💚 @lbbdcouncil #hafbarkinganddagenham

Meet Shaun from @goingpicking They joined the GROW cohort in 2023. Their journey has been transformative, strengthening the foundations of their business and growing its trading income. They are now exploring social investment to expand their work. Read more here and on our website. #socialenterprise #funding #barking #dagenham #community

Company Drinks is super local—and can be super local in many different places 🌱 Born and rooted in Barking & Dagenham, it has its deepest connections there. In 2019, @comunitafrizzante @la.foresta.rovereto in Northern Italy started and is growing its own local context 🍇🍏 Now, in 2026, a first German drink is starting to take shape. Called “Gemeine Getränke”, the name plays on the double meaning of gemein—“common.” Like in English, the word has largely lost its connection to things and practices we share, use, and care for together. #GemeineGetränke is focusing on this meaning. We’ve just begun first visits and conversations in Karlsruhe, where a new super local drink is emerging. The site is the Katzenwedelwiese, a community orchard and meadow leased by ZKM | Centre for Art and Media, and part of its wider art space structure. This unusual connection between a museum and a meadow was initiated by artist Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro as part of the exhibition project #CriticalZones. Since then, the meadow has become a public space - used by ZKM, local residents, and groups for land-based practices, community activities, artistic work, and inter-species learning. Earlier in March, Kathrin joined the spring pruning and maintenance day as the ideal moment to acknowledge and honour the more-than-human aspects of any drinks making. Drinks made elsewhere were shared, conversations began, and first ideas started to form around how art, economy, and drinks might connect here. The meetings were organised and woven together by ZKM curator Mira Hirtz following the orchard’s community networks. There will be more “gemeine” drinks news soon. If you’re in the area, join us on Saturday 11 July for an afternoon of making fermented tea from blackberry leaves with Kitchen Ferm Lab @herrundfraurio . 🍃 #GemeineGetränke is developed by Kathrin and Shaun from Company Drinks, working with @zkmkarlsruhe and @katzenwedelwiese , contributing to @myvillages_rsoe and partnering with @hfg_ka . Thanks for now to Mira Hirtz @zkmdirektor Alistair Hudson, @celinecondorelli , @stephane.verlet.bottero , Fabian Faylona for the amazing Wimmelbild.

Don’t forget…from 12-4pm we will be celebrating our wonderful community with a Spring open day. Join us for bulb planting, food, arts, crafts, family yoga and more 🌸🐣💚

Who remembers the Company Drinks Community Open Day in September 2023, when Vi told us the story of hop-picking? Vi had knitted her entire family, and each beautifully detailed figure became part of the “hopping” story and history. One of the figures is Vi herself, who as a young girl would travel to Kent with her mum and extended family to go hop-picking. It was the idea of the Happy Hoppers group to display this knitted history at Valence House, where the group meets once a month. Vi had been a regular contributor from the very beginning in 2014, and sadly passed away last December. We were kindly offered two display vitrines, which were carefully arranged last Saturday. One contains the knitted family and a photo of Vi telling her story. The second display includes photos and objects from Vi attending the very first Company Drinks hop-picking trip to Little Scotney Farm in Kent, also in 2014. Vi went on to join many more hopping trips over the years — always the fastest picker — and she even appears as the star on the label of our Green Hop Tonic, made with hops from that first trip. Thank you to Pip Field, the Happy Hoppers group, and the Valence House Archive for making this special display in memory of Vi possible. ✨ @valencehousemuseum

It’s truly great to see this new drink #AraweloDrinks by Fozia Ismail – the amazing community organiser, cook, researcher and founder of Arawelo Eats. We first met at the #UniteAgainstDividers activation day in 2017, organised by @keepitcomplex . Together with Edwina Bruford, Fozia invited everyone to make sambusas, letting us navigate our different understanding of the dish whilst rolling and folding the dough. A year later, Fozia hosted a #DigestingPolitics lunch at Company Drinks, organised by Cam Jarvis, sharing East African food and drinks alongside the histories, recipes and ideas behind her supper club. The Digesting Politics Lunches  were regular communal lunches to enjoy food and to unpack some of the politics behind it. The new Arawelo Drink – “Solidarity in a Can” has been developed with refugee and asylum-seeking women together with drinks producers in Bristol, and will be available at venues across Bristol and London. We’re sure it’s going to be delicious  - packed with flavour and politics – and wishing it a fantastic launch and orders when it launches in Bristol during Refugee Week ✨ A big thank you to Cam Jarvis @_whenitworks for sending the latest photos of Fozia and the new drink 🍀 @dhaqancollective @arawelo_eats @counterpointsarts @keepitcomplex #onedrinkatatime

A great morning of bottling new ideas! Thanks Ben White from Creative Arts and Humanities programme @ucl to visit Company Drinks with a group of amazing students from the creative professional module. An hour of harvesting stories and ideas from what Company Drinks has been doing and experimenting with over the years, was followed by an hour of bottling new ideas - in the shape of drinks ideas and new concepts for labels. It was amazing to see what can be developped in such a short time and thanks for all the supportive energy and ideas towards more equitable futures and better economies. #CentrePlausibleEconomies @ucleastengage

A few years ago, with the wonderful Ida Fabrizio, we planted a heart of daffodils in the garden, a living symbol of love and solidarity. 🌼 Every spring, it returns and fills the space with light and warmth, a small reminder of what we can grow together. 💚 Sending love from the garden and all of us at Company Drinks, to everyone finding their own ways to care, connect, and bloom this season.

It’s that time of year when the rain just keeps on coming 🌧️ but we’re starting to see the beauty in it! At Company Drinks, we’re finding joy in the rainy days, those moments when the sun breaks through and the raindrops sparkle with gold, the birds still chatter away, and that soothing sound of rain falling makes everything feel calm and alive ✨ The rain’s hard at work too, feeding all the sleeping plants and getting things ready for a burst of colour in spring 🌱🌸 And when it’s too wet to be outside, we bring the good stuff indoors! This week at Growclub we stayed cosy and turned our home-grown herbs into a punchy, immune-boosting Fire Cider 🫚🍋🍎 Here’s to the rain, the sunshine showers, and all the bright things they bring 🌈💧

Our latest Community Drink: Winter Berry Cordial There’s a special kind of magic in making drinks with and for each other✨ In December 2025, we came together one last time that year to mix, make and learn together in the Company Drinks kitchen. Our drinks-making sessions only happen a few times a year, but they’re always some of our favourite moments. These afternoons give us time to work as a team, learn more about the drinks-making process, share stories and recipes, and reminisce about our seasons of picking and making together. 🍂 Autumn and winter can feel quiet when it comes to wild food and flavour, but as the year went on, we spent time gathering, harvesting and foraging a beautiful mix of seasonal ingredients. Wild apples, blackberries, rosehips, sloes and grapes were all pressed, steamed and juiced into a delicious Winter Berry Cordial. It’s just as good fizzed up and poured over ice on a sunny January afternoon, as it is gently warmed with some spices for a cosy winter’s glow. 🌱 As the land of Barking and Dagenham rests and prepares for the spring sun to return, we’re taking a short break from picking, but we’ll be back from March for another year of land care, community harvesting and celebrating the best local flavours of Barking and Dagenham. You can pick up a bottle of this limited edition cordial from our Pavilion in Barking Park. 📧 [email protected] or come to our #SpringSprung Community Open Day to try or pick up our locally made drinks. 📸 Images 1-4 show a bottled drink and the ingredients for this drink being processed