This article explores the growing trend of luxury ice in the cocktail industry, examining its environmental impact and questioning its claims of purity and superior quality. It features criticism from climate change researchers and highlights the scientific advancements in producing purer ice through lab-based methods. It calls out the industry for waste of resources.
The luxury ice market, catering to high-end cocktail bars, is booming, with businesses selling ice harvested from remote locations and ancient glaciers at exorbitant prices. This trend involves tales of purity and “romance,” like adding 100,000-year-old glacial ice to your drink. Mike Berners-Lee, a climate change researcher, criticizes this as a wasteful use of resources in a world facing critical environmental challenges.
He views the luxury ice industry as an example of “bullshit jobs” that should be eliminated to create a more sustainable economy. Companies such as Hundredweight Ice are making millions selling ice to Michelin-starred restaurants. Purveyors like Disco Cubes and Arctic Ice are also getting a slice of the pie, offering ice at premium prices. Despite the high costs, the functional difference between luxury ice and regular ice is minimal, with the main selling point being the story and perceived purity. The core argument for luxury ice is its supposed purity, with companies claiming their ice is free of modern-day pollutants. However, experts challenge this notion. Christoph Salzmann, a professor of physical and materials chemistry at University College London, argues that purer ice can be made in a lab, exceeding the purity of glacial ice. Glacial ice, formed from compressed snow over thousands of years, still contains microscopic gas inclusions that can be avoided in lab-created ice. Salzmann's research highlights the process of directional freezing, which involves freezing water slowly from the bottom up, pushing impurities out and creating perfectly clear ice. He and his team have developed a machine that achieves this, creating high-purity ice by slowly lowering a tube of pure water into a freezer. The drinks industry already uses Clinebell machines, which operate on the same principle, to produce large blocks of clear ice. The high price tag of luxury ice has led to the question whether or not the quality of ice is in fact improved, or just the story. The taste of drinks will not significantly improve with luxury ice, and the purity can be achieved in a more sustainable way in the lab
Luxury Ice Climate Change Sustainability Cocktail Industry Science
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