Merroir: Where Sea Shapes Spirit
From tide to table, distilleries are bottling sips from the sea and reawakening our connection to water.
By: Amanda Horn | Images by Reece Sims
Inhale and a refreshing burst of sea spray tickles your nose as if you’re being misted by a nearby waterfall. A storm of flavours crashes within the walls of the glass, washing over your palate with a cooling but sharp salinity that lingers on the finish. It’s those tasting notes and sensation that gets me every time. Not because it’s a gimmick, but a trigger, unlocking memory, melody, and mirroring the cadence of water back to us. Whether it’s the tug of the tide, the sting of sea spray, or salt air clinging to your skin, the ocean shows up in countless forms, just like our connections to it. As humans, we love the smell of the sea and what the ocean, the original mirror, reflects back to us. We are drawn to it, because we are of it.
Uncovering Merroir
There’s a growing movement in the spirits world around ‘merroir’. This term, borrowed from oyster farming, is quietly transforming how we understand and enjoy flavour on a new level. Call it the ocean’s answer to terroir — this portmanteau of mer (meaning sea) and terroir (sense of place) speaks to the way coastal environments shape taste, aroma, and character in everything from gin to whisky to salt-kissed cocktail bitters. Just as wine lovers revere the soil and slope where a grape is grown, a new generation of distillers are turning to the sea to shape the taste of spirits. Merroir isn’t new, but the way it’s being used is.
Distillers have been bottling a sense of place on land for generations. But today, they are going deeper, acknowledging the ocean not just as a distant muse but as an active partner in their craft. In doing so, they are becoming voices for the ocean through storytelling, taste, and sense of responsibility from tide to table.
After spending time with scientists who study why we are hardwired to respond positively to water through our deep cultural, neurological, and physiological bonds, I understand why. It’s not just poetic, the essence of seawater quite literally lives in our blood. It’s primal. It’s personal. It’s visceral.
We’re inherently attracted to bottle labels that whisper of windswept coastlines and icy plunges, kelp forest dives, and the sharp crack of shucked oysters rinsed clean. Earthy notes of chalk, shell, and low-tide seaweed rising, conjuring the faint trace of footprints trailing across a misty morning shoreline. It’s not just taste, it’s place. What it evokes in me might differ for you, but it’s undeniably transporting.
Tidal Tastes
Look at each corner of the world and you’ll now find spirits shaped by the sea. Together, these expressions map a sensory atlas of water’s many forms and the flavours they carry. Each interacts with local ingredients— kelp, samphire, oysters, citrus, herbs—to tell a story of place. Not just where it was made, but how it was made, and why. Let’s explore some of the liquid landscape of spirits shaped by the sea.
1. The Japanese Bitters Umami Bitters
Chiba Prefecture, Honshu, Japan
Just a few drops of this ocean elixir, made from kelp, bonito (tuna) flakes, dried shiitake mushrooms, and yuzu peel, transforms a drink into something alive with the sea. These bitters don’t merely season, they awaken. They offer clarity, not clutter as an echo of shoreline cuisine captured in liquid form. Intense, unapologetic, and brimming with saline complexity, they reshape the contours of a cocktail with a single drop. In an Old Fashioned or Last Word, they don’t whisper, they sing of sea spray and umami, casting even the most classic builds into new coastal light.
2. Mermaid Gin & Salt Vodka
Isle of Wight, England, UK
The songs of sirens, the original stewards of the sea, call us from the shore, and Mermaid Gin, crafted by the Isle of Wight Distillery, answers in flavour. Distilled with ten botanicals including rock samphire (also called sea asparagus) it brings a green, peppery brightness and a breeze of coastal salinity. Similarly, Isle of Wight Distillery’s Salt Vodka, is made with pure island spring water and a touch of sea salt, delivering a cool, mineral stillness that echoes the island’s tidal pools and chalky cliffs.
3. Isle of Harris Gin
Isle of Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
From a distillery perched where land gives way to sea, Isle of Harris Gin captures the Outer Hebrides’ elemental quiet. Its signature sugar kelp, hand-harvested from local tidal waters, imparts a gentle salinity and a soft, savoury sweetness — like low tide woven through citrus and juniper. It’s not just a flavour note, but a feeling: like the hush of waves folding against stone. More than a coastal spirit, it’s a community endeavour, each bottle rooted in ecological foraging and shaped by the people who call this place home, carrying with it the quiet pride of an island that gives as much as it holds.
4. Sheringham Seaside Gin
Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
The name Sheringham nods to early geography. Sheringham Point and the former community of Sheringham, now known as Shirley, anchors the distillery in the coastal heritage of place. An early pioneer of merroir-forward distilling in Canada, Sheringham Seaside Gin helped put Pacific Northwest gin on the map. Imagine a gin kissed by the crisp Pacific breeze. The briny lift of winged kelp and wild coastal botanicals dances across your palate, conjuring the edge of the Salish Sea, where forest and ocean breathe in rhythm. Sheringham Seaside Gin isn’t just a flagship gin, it’s a liquid postcard for the region.
5. Iceberg Vodka
Clarke’s Beach, Newfoundland, Canada
Sourced from 20,000-year-old icebergs drifting through the North Atlantic, Iceberg Vodka is made from one of the purest water sources on Earth. Frozen long before industrialization, untouched by modern trace elements, this vodka was born of stillness and liquid history. It carries no salt, no herbs, nothing louder than the quiet conviction of its own restraint. And yet, within that clarity lives a deep and echoing story: an ode to merroir etched not in tides or brine, but in the calm drift of time-locked glaciers.
6. Copperpenny No. 006 Oyster Shell Gin
North Vancouver, BC, Canada
Copperpenny Distillery opened in early 2022, born from a well-traveled ritual of collecting local gins and a desire to distill something that spoke to the spirit of British Columbia as home. That vision comes into focus with Copperpenny No. 006: Oyster Shell Gin, a spirit that channels the Pacific through every pour. Distilled with Fanny Bay oyster shells, citrus and herbs, it tastes like the coast. It’s mineral, green, and quietly powerful. Imagine standing in the bay, the tide curling around your legs. You inhale, taking in the salinity and minerality of your surroundings; that’s the experience you’ll get tasting this gin.
Embracing the Essence of the Ocean
A true expression of merroir doesn’t just taste, it transports. It calls forth memory. It evokes longing. It connects us to coastlines we’ve walked and oceans we’ve only dreamed of returning to. These spirits are more than drinks; they’re vessels. They carry time, place, and feeling.
Water awakens all our senses—its sound, its touch, its scent, its shimmer moves us deeper, speaking in a language the body remembers and the spirit recognizes. As it nourishes the botanicals that season our spirits, it nourishes something in us too, shaping how we perceive, experience, and remember flavour.
In a world where our palates are becoming more discerning, understanding the building blocks of taste isn’t just science, it’s storytelling. It’s a way to connect to land and sea, to past and future, and to ourselves.
Next time you raise a glass, pause. Feel the current. Ask yourself: What body of water am I connected to? What coastline, memory, or longing lives in this drop? See where your next sip takes you.
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