Our STORY
How it all began
Fever-Tree began in 2003 with a meeting of minds and one simple premise:
if three quarters of your drink is the mixer, wouldn’t you want it to be the best?
Our HISTORY
2003
Tim & Charles meet and reignite a long-forgotten and neglected sector of the drinks industry
Fever-Tree began in 2003 with a meeting of minds and one simple premise: if three quarters of your drink is the mixer, wouldn’t you want it to be the best?
Our co-founders Charles and Tim, working in different parts of the drinks business, had both spotted that premium spirits were growing quickly, fuelled by consumers’ increasing awareness of the provenance of what they ate and drank.
However, this growing interest in premium food and drink had seemed to neglect mixers, a crucial element of the drinks industry that remained flat. It struck them both as extraordinary that people were paying a good deal of money for a high-quality spirit, so a similarly premium mixer was needed.
2005
Charles & Tim set out to put quality back into mixers, Indian Tonic Water was born
From the very beginning, Charles and Tim approached their business in a different way - there would be no compromise at Fever-Tree. Flavour and quality were of the utmost importance. This mindset led them on an 18-month adventure from the archives of the British Library to facing the wrong end of a Kalashnikov in the Democratic Republic of Congo and concluded with the launch of our Premium Indian Tonic Water in 2005, with the belief we still operate by today…
Tim could be seen cycling the streets of London getting Fever-Tree's name out there. We soon got our first UK retail listing in Waitrose.
2018 - 2020
Market Value & New Products
By 2018, Fever-Tree had overtaken Schwepps in value in the UK. Also now in Denmark, Belgium and the USA).
We then launched the Refreshingly Light range.
We held our first USA conference in 2019.
2020
Sodas & Germany
The Soda range was launched in 2020, the same year Fever-Tree acquired Global Drinks Partnership (GDP), our German distributor based in Munich.
We also opened the London HQ bar during the lockdown.
2021 - 2023
Growth
In 2021, Fever-Tree had produced enough products to reach up to the moon and back 9 times! We start working with our 9th production site and our first in the USA.
By 2022, Fever-Tree is present in 100+ countries, with 612 SKUs and 53 delicious liquids. With over 300 people hired globally!
The Sydney office opens in Australia in 2023. This takes us to 4 global offices, with 9+ hubs and over 360 employees.
2024
Our Growing Team
Fever-Tree had over 350 global employees, spanning across the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Austria, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.
2024
Pioneering to product an unrivalled drinking experience at every occasion
Since we put the lid on our first bottle of our Premium Indian Tonic Water, we haven’t wavered in our single-minded mission to bring quality, flavour and choice back to mixers.
Innovation remains at the heart of Fever-Tree and we've developed a range of tonic waters that perfectly complement the varied flavour categories of gin. We've found three incredibly diverse varieties of ginger that, together, create a remarkably deep, fresh and true taste, which we've used to make a selection of ginger ales and ginger beer. We've developed a recipe for cola using Madagascan vanilla with the single purpose: to bring out the best in dark spirits, like whiskies and rum. We have lemonades using the finest, naturally sourced ingredients and a beautifully simple soda water too.
Our story is about going to the ends of the earth in pursuit of the best and, the most exciting thing is, we’ve only just scratched the surface.
Our INGREDIENTS
We source our quality ingredients from across the world. Click on the ingredients below to explore the lengths we go to.
QUININE
Quinine is the key ingredient that creates the gentle bitterness in tonic water. Our name was chosen as it is the colloquial name for the cinchona tree, the bark of which produces quinine. After discovering early 17th century references in the British library, Charles and Tim located one of the only remaining plantations of original Cinchona Ledgeriana trees (known locally as ‘fever trees’) which produce some of the highest quality quinine in the world, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For Charles and Tim, there was no other option but to source Fever-Tree’s quinine from this area.
LEMON THYME
Our Mediterranean Tonic includes a handful of essential oils from herbs gathered from around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Lemon Thyme from Provence is one of the ingredients that provides the tonic with its uniquely floral aroma, boosting the subtle aromas of great vodkas and citrus and herbaceous gins.
NIGERIAN GINGER
The ginger that we source from Nigeria has an aromatic intensity to it that adds depth to the ginger flavour. It perfectly complements the fresh zesty notes of the fresh green ginger and the warm and spicy notes of the ginger that we source from Cochin in South West India.
COCHIN GINGER
Uniquely warm and spicy, this ginger complements the flavour notes in the Nigerian ginger and fresh green ginger perfectly. These are cultivated by a small specialist producer in the beautiful Cochin area of India, where Charles and Tim have been to visit the farmers.
SICILIAN LEMONS
Some of the world’s finest lemons grow in fertile groves in Sicily, extracts of which are used in our Sicilian Lemonade and Lemon Tonic Water. To extract the high quality oils from the skin of the lemons, Sfumatrice equipment is used to gently press the lemons - normally a process reserved for the perfume industry. By extracting these oils, we are able to create the fresh and zesty flavour for our lemon mixers.
KOLA NUT
The majority of the global supply of kola nuts come from West Africa, typically they are grown in cultivated environments for higher yields & as a result, often are exposed to pesticides in the soil. We have carefully selected our Kola nuts from Jamaica which are grown in the wild and benefit from the fertile soil of Jamaica's rich land. By sourcing kola nuts from Jamaica we are able to guarantee the natural growing conditions which results in a superior product.
The nut’s aroma is sweet and rose-like with a bitter taste that does get sweeter on chewing the nuts. They add a natural source of caffeine into the liquid along with a subtle bitter note that sits under & balances out the sweetness & spice.
TAHITI LIME
Mexico grows some of the very best citrus fruits; we source our Tahiti lime from groves from the Colima, Michoacán, Martinez de la Torre and Veracruz regions of Mexico where they are handpicked to ensure the best freshness, smell and flavour quality.
SPEARMINT
Our spearmint is grown in the El Bourouj region of Morocco. During the harvest season the mint leaves are cut by hand daily generally in the morning when the plants are most fragrant. We use the flowering tops of the mint which are dried and steam distilled.
ITALIAN BLOOD ORANGE
The juicy blood oranges we source are grown throughout Southern Italy and Sicily, growing best in a small area to the South of Mount Etna. The fantastic dark colouring of the flesh - or the ‘blush’ as it is known - happens when the oranges are exposed to sub-zero temperatures. The colder the winter, the redder the oranges are when they are harvested.
ELDERFLOWER
To capture the finest elderflower flavour, we source handpicked flowers from the English countryside. We ensure our elderflowers are hand-collected from the highest quality elder bushes in the UK in the late Spring when the elderflowers are in full bloom. The flowers are picked when they are at their freshest before the petals are distilled into an oil.
FRESH VANILLA
True Madagascan vanilla is a difficult thing to grow but the rewards are bountiful - its taste and aroma are so highly prized it is now worth more than its weight in silver. Vanilla is not native to the island of Madagascar. Despite its unrivalled breadth of biodiversity, there is no native fauna to pollenate the vanilla flowers; instead, local farmers painstakingly hand-pollenate each flower. The rigorous approach we take to our vanilla cultivation results an intensely sweet and warming burst of flavour.
SCOTTISH SEA SALT
We are proud to use Scottish sea salt for our drinks. Renowned for its distinctive quality, the salt we use is collected using a unique method that involves crystallising salt on large towers of Blackthorn bushes. Situated on the Scottish West Coast, the Ayrshire sea water passes through a large thorn tower to create a delicious brine before being crystallised into premium salt crystals. This is a salt like no other, celebrated for the natural process used to harvest it & its uniquely sweet and umami flavour.
JAPANESE YUZU
We found our yuzu in the southerly region of Kochi in Japan, where our farmers practice traditional farming methods and techniques. They below to Japanese agricultural cooperatives, which assist farmers with surrounding fertilisers to ensure they can effectively grow their fruit & support welfare.
FRESH GREEN GINGER
The discovery of this ginger from the Ivory Coast was a real ‘eureka’ moment for Charles and Tim. Unlike any other ginger, it has an incredible lemongrass freshness to its aroma due to the oils being extracted as soon as the ginger is harvested. Charles has visited the farmers in the Ivory Coast who are cultivating this unique ginger and distilling the oils specially for Fever-Tree.
Our 20 YEARS IN 2025