Partner foragers and growers — how we source our plants

We don’t grow our plants ourselves. Every leaf, every root, every zest that goes into our tanks comes from a partner forager or market gardener — people who’ve made the plant their craft, and whom we’ve picked one by one. Most are in organic farming — not all. They all know us by our first names. It’s an ecosystem we’ve built slowly, through visits, tastings and trust.

Why hand-picked partners

Three reasons, always the same:

1. Traceability — we know which field each plant comes from. If a batch has an issue, we trace the chain back in 24 hours.
2. Quality — partner producers harvest at the right season, the right hour, and deliver quickly. Verbena picked on Tuesday morning can be in the tank Wednesday afternoon.
3. Direct relationship — a producer we’ve met, watched at work, is a quality we can grow with. Not an anonymous line on an invoice.

Our partners

Out of respect for our producers, we don’t list every name here — some prefer anonymity and we respect that choice. We can describe the main families:

Gentian harvesters

The yellow gentian (key to Cerf’Gent) comes from professional gentian harvesters who pick the roots by hand, between 1,000 and 1,600 metres altitude. It’s a rare trade — fewer than a hundred people in France.

Market gardeners

Several growers, most of them organic, supplying our verbena, lemon balm, caraway, anise, coriander, sage, basil, hyssop and thyme.

Wild-plant foragers

Professional foragers (a regulated profession, with Regional Natural Park training) who supply wild serpolet and wild elderberry, at the rhythm of the seasons.

Beekeepers

For our honeys (chestnut honey in cocktails, forest honey in some limited editions).

The orchardist

Bitter-orange zest, apples, wild blueberries for selected recipes.

What we source through specialised suppliers

Let’s be honest: some plants don’t grow in France. Ceylon cinnamon, green cardamom, combava lime, star anise, liquorice, tropical citrus — we source them from European wholesalers specialised in herbalism, favouring organic supply when available, with full traceability.

About 15 % of our raw material therefore comes through these specialised supply chains. We don’t try to hide it — importing Ceylon cinnamon to make “local cinnamon” would make no sense.

A working cycle

Across the seasons, our calendar looks like this:

• April–May: early plant picking (elderflower, first verbena growth, wild thyme)
• June–July: peak aromatic season (lemon balm, thyme, coriander, chamomile)
• August–September: late harvest (caraway, lavender, hyssop), beginning of roots
• October–November: root harvest (gentian, angelica, liquorice) before the first frosts
• Winter: long macerations, testing new recipes, visits to producers, planning next season’s harvest calendar

What changes when you know your producers

Concretely, five things:

1. Quality rises naturally — we adjust each year with direct feedback
2. Prices stay stable — no pressure on margins, no annual renegotiation
3. Volumes adapt — when demand explodes (like after London 2025), we can double an order in two weeks
4. Varieties get tested — a producer tells us “here, I planted a patch of lemon basil, want to try?”, and we try
5. People become friends — some harvests happen together, with the producer’s team and ours

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Also read: Three friends, one liqueur house · Forgotten plants · L’Alchimie Végétale, 27 plants.