This year marks 30 years since the German Bernardo Zinhard, based in Lanzarote, decided to leave the restaurant he ran to focus on the production of prickly pear jam. Today his company is a benchmark in the archipelago, also for mojos.
His son Philipp has explained in the radio program Más de Uno Gourmet, from Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero, how they have expanded their range of products with prickly pear and goat's milk liqueurs, cabrajillo, as well as classic and prickly pear gin.
- How were the beginnings of Mermeladas Bernardo?
My father had a restaurant that was a typical Canarian patio and had many prickly pears that were not used, so he came up with the idea of making a jam to sell it in the restaurant as a souvenir for tourists.
From there, some stores and supermarkets started asking for it. Then he decided to close the restaurant, which was a lot of work, and focused on jams.
- How did you come up with the idea of creating a prickly pear gin?
We already had cactus and goat's milk liqueurs, until four years ago we started doing tests to create a gin distilled in Lanzarote, which did not exist at that time. And we decided to use the Indian prickly pear, a very particular fruit from the Canary Islands that comes from Mexico, but the fruit here is better.
"One of our liqueurs, the cabrajillo, arose at a Saborea event"
The liqueurs are for taking as shots, although there are also people who use them in cocktails. We have had the Indian prickly pear for a long time, the goat's milk one came about to do something rooted in the land and the cabrajillo really came about at a Saborea. We came up with the idea of mixing the goat liqueur with coffee, people loved it so we released it as a product.
It's interesting how new ideas come up at events like this...
Yes, they come up because you talk to consumers. We sell to supermarkets, so we lack a bit of feedback from people. So the events help us to talk to other producers and with people in general and things come up.
- What are the two types of gin that you have for sale?
The misnamed yellow gin is a more classic London dry, very balanced, with the classic citrus tones of gin. In its maceration and distillation we include Indian prickly pear and also the cactus leaf, but without it standing out too much to maintain that classic line.
The process for the Cactus Gin is the same, but during the distillation we use prickly pear juice, which changes the gin a lot because it gives it a little more sweetness and kills the dryness of the juniper, without losing it completely. I always say that people who don't like gin very much prefer the Cactus gin, as is my case (laughs). More classic people prefer the London dry.
- Where can your gin be bought?
In Lanzarote we have it in the Spar, in the Supermercados Marcial, in the Hiperdinos we have just started and also in several specialized stores in Arrecife.
