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From Soil to Still: The Master of Botanicals Rethinking Sustainability in Premium Spirits

Alessandro Garneri, Master of Botanicals for Bombay Sapphire and Martini, explains how soil health, climate resilience and long-term grower partnerships shape every bottle.

This Q&A is part of Observer’s Expert Insights series, where industry leaders, innovators and strategists distill years of experience into direct, practical takeaways and deliver clarity on the issues shaping their industries. In the world of premium spirits, few roles influence both flavor and environmental impact as profoundly as the Master of Botanicals—the specialist responsible for sourcing, studying and safeguarding the plants, herbs and fruits that give a spirit its flavor, aroma and character. Few practitioners have pushed that responsibility further than Alessandro Garneri.

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Garneri has spent nearly 20 years within the Bacardi portfolio, and since 2017, has led the company’s Global Botanicals Centre in Geneva. His work spans advancing sensory and sourcing technologies while sustaining generations-long relationships with growers. For Garneri, every spirit begins long before distillation. It begins in the soil.

As Master of Botanicals for some of the world’s most recognized spirits—including Bombay Sapphire, St-Germain Liqueur and Martini—he oversees a sourcing ecosystem that stretches across continents, climates and centuries-old agricultural traditions. Coriander seeds dried beneath the Moroccan sun. Lemon peel harvested and hand-peeled in the citrus groves of Murcia, Spain. Angelica root drawn from Saxony, Germany. Each botanical reflects the quiet influence of its origin—soil composition, climate and the precise moment of harvest—natural variables that shape nuance and character, ultimately influencing how an ingredient reveals itself through distillation and, finally, in the glass.

Under Garneri’s stewardship, sourcing is approached as an exercise in long-term custodianship rather than simple procurement. All ten botanicals used in Bombay Sapphire are sourced from certified sustainable suppliers, with close collaboration between Garneri and dedicated farmers and growers to nurture soil health, enhance crop vitality and protect biodiversity. The intention is resilience—ensuring landscapes and livelihoods can endure, season after season, without compromising quality.

That philosophy carries through to production. At Laverstoke Mill—the home of Bombay Sapphire, a former paper mill re-imagined as a working distillery—Garneri works in close partnership with the talent distillation team to embed environmental responsibility into daily practice. The site operates on 100 percent renewable electricity and recycles or converts more than 99 percent of its waste into energy. Even packaging decisions, from the fully recyclable blue glass bottle to sustainably certified paper labels, reflect the same holistic, system-wide consideration.

Following the retirement of longtime Master of Botanicals Ivano Tonutti three years ago, Garneri formally assumed the role across multiple heritage brands within the Bacardi portfolio, bringing continuity to a discipline defined by patience, precision, and trust built over decades.

As growing conditions continue to shift and expectations around transparency and quality evolve, Garneri sits at the intersection of craftsmanship, sustainability and global supply chain strategy. Helping to protect the world’s botanicals—while preserving the character they bring to iconic spirits—is becoming one of the industry’s most complex imperatives, and one that increasingly begins far from the distillery, in the fields themselves.

Every gin begins with botanicals. What does sustainable harvesting mean in the context of global supply chains for ingredients like lemons, coriander seeds and angelica root?

Sustainable harvesting requires a perspective that extends well beyond a single season or shipment, considering the health of a supply chain across decades. For botanicals such as lemons, coriander seeds and angelica root, this means working with growers who actively care for soil vitality, steward water responsibly and harvest at a rhythm the land can sustain.

Within a global supply network, sustainability is underpinned by traceability and........

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