Strawberry Tea-Ni
A summery and floral drink made with our Summer Tea Party Cocktail Tea. This one is perfect with or without alcohol, so you can enjoy this drink all summer long.
A summery and floral drink that can be enjoyed all summer long. This one is perfect with or without alcohol, so you can drink this all day long.
INGREDIENTS
30ml Gin (for an alcohol-free version add 30ml extra tea)
METHOD
PRIOR TO SERVING
Pre-brew 2 teaspoons of Summer Tea Party Cocktail Tea in 250ml and chill. (Use 60ml-90ml for this recipe, and save the rest for later - chill in the fridge for up to 3 days).
AT TIME OF SERVING
Add The Curious Cabinet Strawberry Shrub Syrup, chilled tea and 30ml gin (or extra tea for an alcohol-free version) to a shaker with lots of ice. Shake well. Double Strain into a coupe glass. Serve.
shop the recipe
FOR MORE RECIPES INSPIRED BY OUR COCKTAIL TEAS CLICK BELOW
Strawberry & Tea Spritz
An alcohol-free strawberry spritz recipe featuring the delicious combination of our Tea Party Cocktail Tea and Strawberry Shrub Syrup. This recipe is perfect for a jug so you can sip on this all day long.
This alcohol-free Summer spritz recipe is and easy and delicious drink to serve friends and family. The recipe below is great for a jug approx 1.25-1.5 litres.
INGREDIENTS
500ml pre-brewed The Curious Cabinet Tea Party Cocktail Tea
Soda Water
METHOD
PRIOR TO SERVING
Pre brew 4 teaspoons of Tea in 500 mls freshly boiled water for 10-15 mins. Strain & allow to cool and then chill in the fridge for at least an hour or two prior to serving. (This can be done the day before).
AT TIME OF SERVING
Per 1.25 litre jug/serving vessel add 500ml of your pre-brewed tea, 165ml The Curious Cabinet Strawberry Shrub Syrup and top with 330ml Soda Water (adjust to taste). Top with Ice. (Be sure not to add the ice too long before serving, as it will dilute your drink as it melts). Add lots of fresh fruit for colour and flavour.
shop the recipe
FOR MORE RECIPES INSPIRED BY OUR COCKTAIL TEAS CLICK BELOW
White Peach Tea-ni
Sophisticated, botanical, and fruity, this martini is our favourite alcohol-free recipe! Made with our Spring Blossoms Cocktail Tea and White Peach Shrub Syrup we hope you love this one as much as us.
Sophisticated alcohol-free drinks don’t have to be boring, and they don’t have to be hard to make. Here’s a simple, yet delicious Peach Tea-ni recipe that was generously photographed by Wallington’s Local Pantry as part of their producer showcase. We recommend using our Spring Blossoms Cocktail Tea for a beautiful floral and delicate flavour.
INGREDIENTS
30ml The Curious Cabinet White Peach Shrub Syrup (or to taste)
90ml brewed & chilled green tea (Check out our Spring Blossoms Cocktail Tea)
Ice
Dried florals for garnish
METHOD
Shake together White Peach Shrub Syrup, tea and ice. Strain into a chilled coupe glass and garnish with florals.
NOTES
For a harder version, you can substitute the tea for gin/vodka - or keep 60ml of tea and add 30ml of gin/vodka. This recipe can be best adapted to your needs.
watch our founder pia, make this recipe:
Shop the recipe
Sunset Caribbean Smash
Mandarin and rum make the perfect pair. They taste especially great in this tropical tipple.
INGREDIENTS
30ml Mandarin Shrub Syrup
30ml Rum
Soda water
Mandarin wheel and rosemary for garnish
METHOD
Add Mandarin Shrub Syrup and rum to a glass with ice. Top with soda water and stir. Garnish with a rim of Mandarin Dust, and wheel of mandarin, and a sprig of rosemary.
shop the recipe
Curious Christmas Gift Ideas
Give the gift of curiosity this Christmas! We’ve curated a range of gifts perfect for family, friends, teachers and colleagues.
Stocking fillers
food and drink lovers
for the mixologist
wine lovers & entertainers
Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria Collaboration
SYRUPS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE
In collaboration with Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, we have added to our award winning range of Shrub Syrups showcasing botanicals foraged from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. 5% of all proceeds from this range will be donated to Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria to raise money towards the continued conservation and research undertaken by the gardens.
The collaboration between The Curious Cabinet and Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria champions a shared value of engaging the community in sustainability and conservation.
the product range
what is a shrub syrup?
Shrub Syrups are based on an old-world recipe combining the flavours of fruit, apple-cider vinegar, and sugar. Originally used as a way of preserving fruit, (prior to refrigeration) Shrub Syrups have become a popular ingredient in bars across the world as a delicious and intriguing cocktail and mocktail ingredient.
recipes and serving suggestions
The new Botanic Gardens series can be enjoyed in a range of recipes, from simply mixed with soda water for an enjoyable alcohol-free drink, or shaken up in a cocktail.
They also taste great with gin, and in particular Anther Distillery’s Florescence Gin – another exciting Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria collaboration.
shared values for sustainability
The collaboration with Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria champions a shared value of engaging the community in sustainability and conservation. Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria’s collaborations are an established way of raising funds and further engaging the community and increasing awareness of the work they do. These collaborations assist in achieving their mission to safeguard plants for the wellbeing of people and the planet toward a vision where all life is sustained and enriched by plants.
Having recently won a Bronze Medal in the 2023 Clean and Conscious Awards for best low-waste food product, we are so excited to be joining forces to raise money for a cause central to our sustainability philosophy as a small business.
“Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria is a world-leader in botanical, horticultural and conservation research and we’re thrilled to be contributing - in our own, small way - to the amazing work they do. I am still pinching myself that we have been invited to collaborate on this new range.”
Pia Cook, Founder of The Curious Cabinet
We hope you will indulge your curiosity by exploring this range, and supporting a cause for conservation and sustainability.
Yours in botanical wonder, The Curious Cabinet.
suggested recipes
A Stroll in the Gardens
Indulge in this delicious cocktail, featuring our collaboration with Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria - Our Boysenberry Shrub Syrup with Bay Laurel foraged from their gardens. With 5% of all proceeds made, each bottle sold helps raise funds towards their research and conservation .
INGREDIENTS
60ml Gin
30ml The Curious Cabinet Boysenberry Shrub
Dash of bitters
Bay leaf to garnish
METHOD
Shake gin, Shrub Syrup, dash of bitters in a shaker with ice. Double strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a bay leaf.
want to read more about our collaboration with
royal botanic gardens victoria?
Paloma
Indulge in this delicious cocktail, featuring our collaboration with Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria - Our Pink Grapefruit Shrub Syrup with Rosemary and Lemon Myrtle foraged from their gardens. With 5% of all proceeds made, each bottle sold helps raise funds towards their research and conservation .
INGREDIENTS
30ml The Curious Cabinet Pink Grapefruit Shrub Syrup
30-60ml Tequila / Mezcal
Soda water
Grapefruit or Rosemary to garnish
METHOD
Add Pink Grapefruit Shrub Syrup, tequila/mezcal and soda water to a tall glass with ice. Adjust to taste. Garnish with a sprig of rosemary or sliced Pink Grapefruit.
NOTES
Our ratios above can be tweaked to your liking. Add more Shrub Syrup if you like the taste a bit stronger, or for a lighter flavour add more soda water.
want to read more about our collaboration with
royal botanic gardens victoria?
Sparkling Grapefruit
Indulge in this delicious alcohol-free treat, featuring our collaboration with Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria - Our Pink Grapefruit Shrub Syrup with Rosemary and Lemon Myrtle foraged from their gardens. With 5% of all proceeds made, each bottle sold helps raise funds towards their research and conservation .
INGREDIENTS
Ice
1 part The Curious Cabinet Pink Grapefruit Shrub Syrup
5 parts Soda water
Rosemary to garnish
METHOD
Add Pink Grapefruit Shrub Syrup and soda water to a tall glass with ice. Adjust to taste. Garnish with a sprig of rosemary.
NOTES
Our ratios above can be tweaked to your liking. Add more Shrub Syrup if you like the taste a bit stronger, or for a lighter flavour add more soda water.
Add one shot of gin, for a curious twist on a G&T, or tequila for a Paloma.
want to read more about our collaboration with
royal botanic gardens victoria?
Pia Cook’s Curious Cabinet filled with award-wining drinks
When Pia Cook was pregnant, a magazine article set her on the path to an award-winning business idea.
By Cam Ward, published in the Geelong Advertiser, 7 October, 2023.
IT is said that necessity is the mother of invention. In Pia Cook’s case, however, her impending motherhood was the necessity for invention.
One festive season, a pregnant Pia – having sworn off cocktails – was sick of drinking soda water, or lemon, lime, and bitters. That’s when she chanced upon a magazine article about a type of drink known as “shrubs” and her life took off on a new direction.
In 2019 she launched The Curious Cabinet and her own range of shrubs. Today they are stocked in some 150 stores around Australia.
Essentially a fruit syrup, shrubs have their origins in the days before refrigeration, when preserving fresh fruit and vegetables was a way of life.
According to the Atlas Obscura website, in addition to preserving their fruit with sugar and vinegar, colonial Americans added cold water to the mix to make a refreshing summer beverage. They called the combination a shrub, from sharab, an Arabic word for “drink.” Medieval Iranian texts describe a beverage known as sekanjabin, which mixed sugar, vinegar and fresh mint with water.
“The description of vinegar, sugar and fruit really appealed to my pregnant tastebuds,” Pia laughs from the upstairs space at The Curious Cabinet factory in Breakwater.
“I just researched what they were and how to make them, tinkered around and that’s how it all started.”While learning the process of making shrubs, Pia says what she developed is quite different from what’s in the textbooks. That is, in part, a nod to her background.
Pia got a Masters of Museum Management in 2004. As part of learning art history, she came across the concept of cabinets of curiosities, pieces of furniture or entire rooms that the well-to-do would fill with objects of interest as a means of demonstrating how widely travelled and broad in knowledge they were.
Pia was intrigued by what drove different people to collect different things. In much the same way, Pia has opted for different flavour combinations in her own Curious Cabinet.
“The name’s broad enough for me to produce anything. I didn’t know where it would lead and what my ideas would be,” she says.
“I’m thankful for that winding road that led me here. And I get to be creative in this role.
“I still wear a lot of hats, I’m still in the kitchen sometimes, but I do have an amazing production team now. They just have to try and rein me in because I’ve always got lots of ideas about what we can do next.”
Until 2022, The Curious Cabinet operated from the kitchen table in her Geelong West home where she and her family were “ living amongst towers of mandarins down the hallway, peaches in the office”.
The Curious Cabinet produces six shrubs at the moment — mandarin, rhubarb, lime, white peach, dark cherry and strawberry.
Mandarin is clearly the most popular — when gt meets Pia, she and her team are getting ready to work through 400kg of mandarins on site at the factory — lime is taking off after being launched this year but rhubarb is the one that people are most passionate about. And that includes Pia herself.
“I think rhubarb lovers love anything to do with rhubarb. That’s a top seller and the closest to my heart because it’s the first one I made,” she explains.
“All of them work beautifully with gin, for example. A lot of gin distilleries have taken them on because they’re an alternative to tonic.”
Pia names Bellarine Distillery and Anther Distillery as her biggest advocates. Anther co-owner Dervilla McGowan even introduced Pia to the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (RBGV), following a collaboration between Anther and the RBGV last year in Anther’s Florescence gin.
Dervilla recommended The Curious Cabinet’s range as a non-alcoholic product for the RBGV’s customers and the response was so positive that Curious Cabinet and the RBGV are now doing their own collaboration, featuring botanicals from the Gardens, with 5 per cent of proceeds to go to the Gardens.
Pia is proud of her company’s low-waste philosophy across the board; she says the aim is to “keep it to pips and stalks”. Fruit used to flavour the shrubs is then used in either products, incorporated in jams and chutneys or freeze dried and powdered into dust for sprinkling on desserts or cocktails.
Not surprisingly, The Curious Cabinet was honoured at the 2023 Clean and Conscious Awards, where its spiced rhubarb chutney took home a bronze medal. There was also a gold, four silvers and a bronze at the 2023 Royal Tasmanian Fine Food Awards.