Today turned out in such a way that we ended up having a Soursop Elixir Tasting between the two of us.  A few days ago, we sold a few bottles of Soursop Elixir to somebody who, we subsequently found out, was a repeat customer who had bought the same Elixir before.

I reprint his comments below to show how we handled the situation (Italics and spacing are mine for easier reading).

I was at your gate last friday to receive an order of soursop liquor/elixer . The road was blocked on the way out of Barranco so we spent the night there were I tasted the elixer on which I fell asleep very fast.

It took me a long time to come to Toledo to be able to find you after several friends talked about this extra ordinary soursop drink. Soursop has been my favorite fruit and drink for years ever since I was in Suriname in the 1960’s.

To tell you the truth I did not taste very much soursop at all and if you had made me taste it before the purchase I would have thought it would be some sort of Grappa.

My questions are now : Did you taste the specific batch? Because other people who had tasted your soursop elixer before asked themselves if you had changed the recipe or that it was filled with something else.

My input was that it was made of the seeds because I did pass out very fast after the consumption of one small shotglass.
Because in drinking a soursop shake years ago in Honduras were they mixed the seeds in the shake I passed out about the same way as I did in Barranco. Later I heard that the seeds are like a sort of Valium/relaxant. Or did you make it of the leaves as a sort of medecine because I don’t taste any soursop fruit.

Looking forward to your reaction!
Kindest Greetings!

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We find this type of feedback very useful as it allows us to review our quality procedures and make sure that we are not missing anything.  I mean, we think our stuff is the best because we make it, it is good to get real opinions in order to make sure that our bias is not clouding our ability to see reality.

Anyway, in response to this, we sat down and “did” a formal tasting of our Soursop Elixir and proceeded to write the following:

Thank you for your feedback, it is nice when somebody gets back to us.

I hope that the following answers some of your questions and clarifies some issues. With specific regards to the Soursop Elixir that you had: the batches; there is only one batch. Making soursop elixir is a huge amount of work compared to some of the other elixirs we make and because of that we only ever made one batch, once we finish drinking or selling it, we will not make any more. This means that if you or anyone had tasted a previous bottling you are now still tasting the same batch. The elixir is stored in 6.5 gallon carboys and sealed until bottling is required. It is allowed to age in the carboy with repeated rackings to clarify it (soursop takes a long time to become clear) every three to six months. The soursop you had at this stage has aged for four years and next year will be bottled as a special 5 year reserve (until it runs out).

I am surprised at your comment that you cannot taste the soursop flavour. The only thing that I can think of saying is that the maturation process has mellowed the in-your-face flavour of fresh soursop and as I am tasting some of the elixir right now I can discern a honey-flowery aroma with hints of butterscotch. The flavour hits the front of the tongue first…sweetness with very mild banana and some passionfruit and then moves to the back with the heat of alcohol and some very subtle bitter, like orange pith. The heat then passes into the belly while the whole tongue is covered quite unctuously. I would not mix it with anything as the flavour is too subtle and I would drink it warm (room temperature) in a brandy snifter in slow sips over half an hour to forty-five minutes. That would be my tasting opinion. I would hazard a guess that other soursop liqueurs you might have tasted are a different drink made with a different technique and maybe not aged as long. I am quite sure that the flavour is different if you tasted an earlier bottling and are comparing but I would add that the flavour has improved and matured with the aging. I am also surprised that you think it tastes like grappa; grappa is a completely different drink, a distillate, usually with the unmistakable flavour of fusil oils still in it, drunk from a small glass in one go. It is really quite the opposite of drinking the soursop elixir.

So, to answer your questions: yes, it is the same batch; yes, we taste it all the time and love it; no, it is not possible that the recipe has been changed because it is the original material. No, seeds were not used and neither were leaves, only ripe pulp with the seeds strained out is in this batch.

Now, the most interesting part that you have mentioned is the elixir’s effect on sleep. I never noticed that before but I will look out for it specifically now that you have mentioned it. I am wondering if the aging process has produced some soporific substance within the chemical reactions that occur during maturation. Thank you specifically for that piece of feedback, we will look into it as such an effect would allow us to use this elixir directly as a natural medicine alternative for insomnia……..

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I hope this is helpful to other people that have tasted our Elixirs and answers some questions that everybody is likely to have.  The important thing is that we got to have a tasting!!  Yum, yum!