In celebration of our 10th birthday, we worked with the team at Melbourne craft distillery, Autonomy Distillers to create a limited-edition native botanical aperitivo.

NATIVO celebrates the distinct Australian native flowers, citrus, and fragrant botanical flavours. Distilled with sweet Davidson Plum and Riverina oranges, complimented with aromatic Rosella, Quandong and Tasmanian Pepper, it’s perfectly bittersweet, with a touch of spice.

Every year at the Bondi Wash Christmas party, we celebrate with a native-infused cocktail – we typically use handpicked botanicals foraged from edible plants in our gardens, like Lilly Pilly or Lemon Myrtle.

Our founder, Belinda became inspired by the process of creating botanical-infused aperitivo style drinks after attending a wedding in Italy in July where they served natural wines, apertivos and digestifs. To celebrate our 10th birthday, we decided to elevate our exploration and design a tailor-made drink to share many of our favourite native flavours.

With help from the experts at Autonomy, we've crafted the dream summer drink - basically an Australian Aperol (but better). It's bright, sweet and a little bit spicy. Bursting with native peach, plum and fresh citrus aromatics, followed by a breeze of botanical spice wafting across the tongue and a light bitterness to finish.

It's delicious on it's own with ice and a dash of soda, or in a spritz. 

Here's our tried and tested recipe for the perfect native-infused summer refresher: 

The NATIVO Spritz

50 ml (1 part) NATIVO
50 ml (1 part) prosecco 
50 ml (1 part) sparkling water 
1 x slice of citrus
Ice

1. Fill large glass with ice
2. Measure and pour NATIVO over ice
3. Add 50ml of prosecco
4. Top with sparkling water 
5. Garnish with a slice of orange or other citrus to bring out sweetness
6. Serve and enjoy

You can order NATIVO online now via the Autonomy website here.