Picks

The picks

• Drinks · Switzerland

  REBELS 0.0% (opens in a new tab)

  rebels00.com

  I do not have the enzyme that breaks alcohol down, which is common where my family is from. The practical version of that is two sips and a face like a tomato, so I have spent a great many evenings as the person at the table ordering something boring.

  And the alcohol-free shelf used to have exactly the problem the free-from aisle still has. Everything on it was an apology. Sweet, thin, obviously standing in for something better, and handed over with the same small pause.

  These are not that. They are bitter where a drink should be bitter and dry where it should be dry, and they hold up over ice with nothing but a strip of peel, which is the only test I care about. Made in Switzerland, and I will admit to being biased about that.

  What I reach for

  The Dark Spice, over a big cube, with orange peel.

• Chocolate · Bern, Switzerland

  Choba Choba (opens in a new tab)

  chobachoba.com

  Chocolate where the farmers who grow the cacao own part of the company. That is the whole reason it is on this page. Thirty-six families in the Peruvian Amazon went in with two people in Bern in 2015 and built it that way on purpose, and you can read how it is structured on their own site rather than taking my word for it.

  I came across them in a previous life, when I was at UBS. I have carried on buying them since, which is more than I can say for most things from that era.

  It also tastes of somewhere. Most chocolate is blended to taste like chocolate in general, which is a real skill and also the reason most of it is forgettable. This tastes of one valley. The dark bars are the ones that live in my drawer.

  What I reach for

  A dark bar, broken rather than cut, with black coffee.

• Broth · Germany

  Jarmino (opens in a new tab)

  jarmino.co.uk

  Broth is the one thing in my kitchen I have never found a shortcut for. Most of what is sold as stock is salt with a brown colour and a picture of a vegetable on the box, and it makes everything taste like the same beige afternoon.

  The beef one is beef bones, water and salt. That is the whole list, and it is why Jarmino is on this page rather than any of the others I tried. A short ingredient list is not a promise about anything. It is just a short list, and after years of reading labels sideways I have a weakness for them.

  I use it as the base of a thing rather than as a drink out of a mug, though I do both. It gives a pan the depth that most recipes get from frying an onion first.

  One honest note, because I would want it from someone else: I am not their quality control. Companies change recipes, the rest of their range is not the beef broth, and the label is the only thing that counts. Read it.

  What I reach for

  The beef broth, as the base for anything that would otherwise start with an onion.

• Skincare · England

  Apothecary & Me (opens in a new tab)

  apothecaryandme.co.uk

  Not food, and here anyway.

  I bought it in the first place for my son, who reacts to a good deal of what is on a normal shelf. The reason I kept buying it is that I can read the whole ingredient list without a search engine open beside me, which is what I ask of food and almost never get from a bottle in a bathroom.

  Anita started the company for her own daughter's skin, in England, which is a story I recognised immediately and which is better in her telling than mine.

  I came to it sideways and stayed. My skin turns out to be exactly as particular as the rest of me, and I spent a long time treating those as two separate problems before I stopped bothering. The oils smell like plants rather than like a spa, which is the compliment I mean it as.

  What I reach for

  The facial oil, at night, after a flight.

The list is short because it is real. More will arrive as I find things worth the space.