The idea for MONTZI was born at a very special apres-ski bar in the Arlberg region of The Austrian Alps.
Here's a picture of me (Harry, Founder) in my early twenties at said bar: The MooserWirt.
I’m the rather questionable, bolshy person on the left with the dodgy white beanie.
The goal was to bottle the essence of this magnificent place, and take it all over the world.
Back then, I had a job in marketing with Smirnoff Vodka, learning about the pioneering stories of Pietr Smirnov, Johnnie Walker, and Charles Tanqueray, which inspired a passion for spirits.
Creating our drink took rather a long time, with some significant misfires.
The idea was to create a unique and better tasting product using organic mountain botanicals, and finding natural sweetness.
In the end I landed on the perfect combination of a clean German wheat-based spirit and certified organic mountain herbs like chamomile, eidelweiss, mallow and pineapple sage.
To avoid using processed sugars, I chose Grade A maple syrup, from St Victor, Quebec.
After driving round too many distilleries in Europe, in search of a partner to bring MONTZI to life, the family behind MooserWirt came to the rescue by introducing me to Destillerie Freihof.
Freihof is an outstanding distillery, founded in 1885, and still run by the same family to this day.
They make high end schnapps as well as luxury vodka. Over the last seven years we have built a good friendship and our liquid is still made at Freihof, just 50km away from The MooserWirt Bar in The Austrian Alps.
During the Covid years, we spent days "working" with bar industry friends, who had more time than usual to play with new concoctions. At one particular session, there came a memorable moment - mixing delicate mountain flowers, with real pressed fruit tastes incredible.
MONTZI Real Fruit Aperitivos and Shots were born.
The result was delicious liquids of a more sociable 21% ABV, that could be enjoyed straight up as a softer shooter, or as an easy to use core ingredient in fruit spritzes and cocktails.
Since 2017 we have been doing as much as we can to help save the snow. We do this by planting three trees for every 50cl bottle of MONTZI sold and so far have planted 485,000 trees in an area of Northern Sumatra the equivalent size of London’s Richmond Park. You can read more about this in our section on tree planting.
