A lemonade that tastes of lemons at Samuelsons of Witney

When Jonathan Luker lost his job in the IT security industry a couple of years ago, he decided he wasn’t going to work for another company again. Instead he would go it alone.

He decided to jump in at the deep end and set up his own company, Samuelsons of Witney, making lemonade, ginger beer and other soft drinks created from real fruits.

Not for him artificial flavourings and ingredients, nothing would be second best.

Jonathan was determined to make a lemonade that looked and tasted like the amazing jugs of fresh lemonade his Aunt Florence made for him and his siblings when he was a child.

He admits that while he has tasted dozens of lemonades throughout inter-vening years, nothing has ever compared to Aunt Florence’s lemonade.

This led him to wonder if there was a market for authentic lemonade.

“The sort that Enid Blyton’s Famous Five took on their picnics or Mrs Beeton featured in her famous cookery collections perhaps?”

Having had long chats with the Daws family from Foxbury Farm, who once ran one of the finest local food outlets in Oxfordshire, he decided to jump in the deep end and go for it, but without comp-romising on the ingredients in any way.

He knew the going would be tough, but 33-year-old Jonathan is an enterprising young man. With just the money he had saved up for a conservatory, he began developing a recipe for his signature drink, Proper Strong Lemonade.

He admits people will question how he could come up with a suitable recipe if he had neither training nor experience.

“I accept that’s a good argument, but when you approach a task with just single-minded determination and vision, it’s surprising what you can do,” he said.

After much trial and error, Jonathan finally created his real lemonade from three simple ingredients: lemons, a little sugar and Blenheim Palace natural mineral water, which give his products a truly local touch. Every 330ml bottle contains the juice of up to four lemons.

“With 20 per cent lemon juice, the Proper Strong lemonade has a flavour that lingers in the mouth many minutes after you’ve taken your last sip,” he said.

He would have loved to have used the old fashioned flip-top bottles, and so add an authentic look to his products but as they cost anything from £1.99 each it wasn’t financially viable.

He concentrated instead on obtaining a label that gives the bottle a quaint old-fashioned look. The portrait of his four-year-old son Samuel, after whom the company has been named, and other members of his family, feature on the labels to emphasise the fact it’s a true family business that ignores additives, preservatives and artificial flavours in their products.

All bottles display a sediment at the bottom of the glass. This is not something to worry about as it signifies that real products have been used.

The generous “use-by date” — which is often unusual if pure ingredients have been used that could deteriorate quickly — is due to heat processing the finished product to destroy the enzymes and microorganisms that could render it unfit for human consumption.

Once the pure lemonades and the strong non-alcoholic ginger beer, made from a 150-year-old ginger beer plant yeast strain, fermented for stronger flavour, began to gain popularity, Jonathan devised other flavours such as elderflower pressé, created from handpicked elderflowers from hedgerows and fields around Oxfordshire.

Sparkling blackberry, to which fresh pressed lemon juice has been added, and lemon and lime, a really fruity drink, were also added to his list.

His amazing rhubarb and custard drink, above, gets its flavour from adding a vanilla pod to rhubarb juice to obtain that special custard flavour. This drink, which took him some time to devise, is already becoming very popular.

Like Bruce Young, of Shaken Oak Mustard, from Hailey, Jonathan calls on family and friends to test and taste the flavours he comes up with. Only when his wife Hannah, his sister and his mother and father give his drinks the thumbs-up will he proceed.

He says that the taste and the provenance of the products matter to him as much as they do to a Michelin- starred chef.

“I know this,” he said confidently, adding that he now counts Michelin-starred chefs amongst both his customers and fans.

The Co-op, Selfridges Food Hall, Waterperry and many other independent Oxfordshire outlets are now among his customers.

He also attends local food fairs, the most successful being the Witney Food Festival which takes place at St Mary’s Church on Saturday, May 17 this year.

For a list of Jonathan’s outlets, visit samuelsonsofwitney.co.uk or call him on 07957 863 406.