Flavor Profile: Medium acidity, high sweetness

Tasting Notes: Sweet, slightly syrupy; and earthy. Elderberry and Elderflower are both the dominant flavors, with a very slight bitter edge, giving a mature, complex overall flavor profile.

Kitchen Pairings: Dr Does extremely well with sweet or gamey preparations; making it excellent for pastry, but also for beef, venison, game birds, and earthier root vegetables like beets.

Bar Pairings: an ideal pairing for non-alcoholic beverages given its complex balance of sweetness, fruity notes, and floral elements. Also works well with neutral spirits like vodka, and has excellent synergy with elderflower liqueurs. 

The Idea: Elderberries are a somewhat dull flavor by themselves. When cooked, they have a sweet, slightly earthy flavor that is unique in that it isn't evocative of other berries, however it's relatively one note. The flowers, on the other hand, have a distinctly mineral, slightly tropical sent that gives a lot of complexity; but no real sweetness. But what if you combine the two?

The idea here was to brew a vinegar where the flowers make up the base of the flavor profile while the berries comprise the body and texture of the vinegar, giving a product greater and more complex than the sum of its parts. The process is lengthy, requiring the first year to be brewing the elderflower vinegar, the second macerating the vinegar with berries, and then finishing the vinegar in its third year with fresh flowers and berries to reinvigorate the initial flavors.