Siren Shrub Co. brings sophistication to beverages

It started with two best friends and a kitchen.

Mindy McCord and Layne Cozzolino first met in 2010 while working at Emy J’s, a coffee shop/cafe in Stevens Point. By 2015, the best friends had fully embraced the local food movement. “We were really into making jams and jellies,” McCord recalls.

The duo made these in their kitchens to sell at their local farmers markets in the Stevens Point area. While selling at the markets, they were making friends with and as a byproduct building a network of local agricultural producers.

When Cozzolino became pregnant with her first child in 2016, the pair turned their attention to non-alcoholic beverages that weren’t loaded down with the chemicals in modern sodas. McCord explained this morphed into a discovery of shrubs.

According to McCord, they came across an article about shrubs in the New York Times and as self-described foodies who were into food preservation techniques it was an instant connection.

While sharing the same name as the woody plants used in landscaping around people’s homes, the shrubs that Cozzolino and McCord work with are a mixture of apple cider vinegar, produce such as fruits or herbs and cane sugar.

Shrubs have a long history dating back many centuries. The name comes from the Arabic word sharāb, which means “to drink.” They also show up in recipe books from past eras as drinking vinegars.

Before refrigeration became a household luxury, vinegar was used to preserve fruits and vegetables to keep them fresh through the winter. The British navy used shrubs in the 18th century to combat scurvy and there are stories of smugglers who would sink barrels of the beverages at sea for later retrieval. Since the vinegar promotes