Yumbo Soda Co. makes Italian-style lemonade from hand-peeled lemons, using no concentrate and no imported juice.

Hand-peeled single orchard Yarra Valley lemons: no concentrate, no imported juice, no shortcuts.

In early September 2020 I spent 4 days straight hand-peeling 600kgs of lemons with a potato peeler, and only the company of my 2-month-old German Wire Haired Pointer puppy, Ernie. It was both therapeutic and infuriating, an apt process that summarised 2020 quite eloquently. Once the zest had been separated from the pith, and the pith from the flesh, I got in touch with local Yarra Valley brewer Scott Howard and got to work finessing the flavour of Yumbo. Over the course of a few weeks, we ran the gauntlet on a few funky variants: dry-hopped lemonade, brown sugar instead of white, double-time for the botanicals etc before settling on the final recipe: Yarra Valley lemons, filtered Yarra Valley water, sugar, makrut lime leaves, lemon myrtle, lemon zest.

We hope you enjoy the flavour of Yumbo: a lemonade celebrating the honest flavours of a time long forgotten!

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