A Britvic incubator borrows a Victorian essence maker’s name.

London Essence is a young brand with an old name. It was launched in November 2016 by WiseHead Productions, which Britvic described in its launch release of 28 November 2016 as a Britvic-backed premium drinks start-up, set up in June 2016 and devised by Ounal Bailey. WiseHead worked as an incubator inside the soft-drinks group, and London Essence was its second launch, after a lightly sparkling alcohol-free drink called Thomas & Evans No.1.

The name looks back to the nineteenth century. Britvic said in 2016 that the new brand “reimagines” an eponymous company from 1896 that was known for making distilled essences, and later company material describes those roots as essences developed for London perfume houses. The modern drinks borrow that idea of distillation: in a release of March 2023 Britvic said the brand’s drinks are made from botanicals chosen by flavour experts and gently distilled, with the aim of bringing out a spirit’s flavour rather than masking it.

The first range was small and aimed at the bar. The 2016 launch release listed a Classic London Tonic Water, a Grapefruit & Rosemary Tonic Water, a Bitter Orange & Elderflower Tonic Water and a Delicate Ginger Ale. The company said the drinks would go mainly into premium on-trade outlets at first, with a few selected retailers, among them the London department stores Harvey Nichols and Fortnum & Mason. Ounal Bailey, quoted as WiseHead’s co-founder, said the business was launching “to fill a gap in the market” at a time when premium spirits and mixers were growing in Britain. The release backed that up with market figures: it said premium mixers had grown by 14 per cent in 2015, and that mixers had been the fastest-growing soft-drinks segment in the out-of-home market over the preceding twelve weeks. The bet, in other words, was on the gin boom and on drinkers who wanted the tonic to match the spirit.

A white square, a botanical frame and an LE monogram.

The brand’s current look dates from February 2024, when London Essence rolled out a refresh designed by BrandOpus, a branding agency in London. Britvic’s release of 16 February 2024 set out the system. The classic brandmark now sits inside a white square; around it runs a square frame with bespoke botanical illustrations woven under and over it; and an “LE” monogram, repeated as a pattern, appears on every product as what the company calls a quality mark. The Dieline reported on 12 February 2024 that the refined monogram wraps around the neck of the slender glass bottles and that the range is colour-coordinated.

The agency framed the job around a single word. Dan Wegrzyn, BrandOpus’s business director, said in the release that the team wanted London Essence to “act and behave as a Tastemaker would,” standing out on shelf and appealing to a new generation of drinkers. Ounal Bailey, by then described as co-founder of The London Essence Co., said the design should raise the brand’s impact and make its identity more recognisable across its touchpoints. Britvic said the refresh followed an advertising campaign called London Distilled in late 2023.

The redesign arrived with a new format. A 250ml slim can reached Waitrose from 11 February 2024, Asda from 4 March and Tesco from 11 March, according to the release, carrying the brand’s Crafted Sodas: Pink Grapefruit, White Peach & Jasmine, Raspberry & Rose, and Aromatic Orange & Fig.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all mixer and alcohol-free names: Canada Dry, Q Mixers, Thomas Henry, Franklin & Sons, London Essence, Double Dutch and Clausthaler. Mixer and alcohol-free brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from small companies that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a cocktail bar.

A mixer or alcohol-free brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the promise it makes, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its drinks are made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a Britvic incubator to a brewer’s soft-drinks arm.

The brand grew inside Britvic and beyond Britain. The Drinks Business reported in October 2022 that Britvic was bringing the London Essence range to the Middle East. In hospitality the company built a draught format, Freshly Infused, which Britvic described in March 2023 as a premium dispense platform for mixed drinks, then pouring in more than 1,000 outlets. Melanie Ginsberg, the brand’s head of marketing in the United Kingdom, said the company was “thrilled” with its growth in both retail and hospitality, and Britvic said its 2023 plans included a summer programme of events, digital media and branded activations. In the same release Britvic called London Essence the fastest-growing mixer company in Britain over the previous twelve months, and in February 2024 it said the Drinks International Brands Report 2024 had ranked the brand second both for top trending and for bestselling mixer.

Ownership changed in January 2025. Carlsberg completed its acquisition of Britvic in mid-January, and the combined business in the United Kingdom took the name Carlsberg Britvic, the Morning Advertiser and Food Manufacture reported on 17 January 2025. London Essence passed with the rest of Britvic’s brands into the Danish brewer’s group.

The name needs care. “London essence” is a generic phrase as well as a brand, and the 1896 date belongs to the earlier essence maker whose name the brand revived, as Britvic describes it, not to the current drinks. Britvic’s releases call the brand The London Essence Co.

For a design guide, London Essence shows how a large soft-drinks group can launch a premium brand as if it were a start-up, borrow a Victorian name for a sense of craft, and then hold the range together with one white square, a botanical frame and a two-letter monogram. Compare Fever-Tree, the London mixer brand that set the premium category, and Thomas Henry, the Berlin mixer maker. For this guide we use botanical green, frame white and peach blush with a refined serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep London Essence’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.