We spent some quality time with Lunya/Lahgo founder and CEO, Ashley Merrill, and founder/CEO of AMASS Botanics, Mark Thomas Lynn – both big fans of making every day a self-care Sunday.

What are the self-care rituals you practice to best care for yourself?

Ashley Merrill: I've worked out obsessively, ever since I was in high school. It’s part of my routine now and is essential to maintaining physical and mental health for me. I’m also religious about sleep — going to bed early and taking naps on the weekend. I find that if I’m tired, everything else I do is a little tainted. I also have quite a skincare routine, from serums and lotions to microcurrent facials.

Mark Lynn: Music is a big stress reliever for me. I have a small Bang and Olufsen speaker that I use to play a lot of chill music – Bassanova has been on frequent rotation lately.

How are you finding connection right now?

AM: The arrival of COVID and the subsequent work from home mandate has had a silver lining in that it has given me the opportunity to spend more time being physically present with my family. I’ve come to appreciate a smaller circle and getting deeper with the friends and family in my bubble. I am certainly struggling a little to connect and maintain a company culture with a remote workforce, but it's a work in progress, and one the whole world is working on together.

ML: This past year, I’ve missed going to bars and restaurants. Now that I’m vaccinated, it’s been nice to connect with friends over dinner and drinks again. We’ve been revisiting all of our go-to places, of course, but also trying some of the new spots that have opened during COVID – Cara in Los Feliz has become a quick favorite.

How do you make your bedroom a sanctuary? How do you make your bedroom your own?

AM: Textiles play a prominent role here — soft Lunya sleepwear (Lahgo for my husband, of course) and bedding always lay the foundation for a cozy night. I also try to set the mood with art, colors, and candles that reinforce the restful environment I'm after. I treat it like a spa away from the spa; using more functional sleep aids like a Lunya mask, magnesium supplements, and infrared lights.

ML: Lighting and scent both play an important role in creating a calming environment for me. Our Art of Staying In candle is one of my favorites to burn at home, since it has a warm, comforting scent that’s still really clean. I like to keep it on my nightstand and burn it before bed to create a moody ambiance. I also do my best to keep things pretty minimal and tidy, especially in the bedroom.

What are your go-to tips for more restful sleep, or more effective lounging?

AM: Stress and motherhood have often made sleep a challenge, to say the least. We've come up with some tricks, like our Do Not Disturb hanger that we use to signal the kids if they can come in or not. Generally, this being up means there's another parent already awake, so the kids can go find them instead of waking up the other. We also set wake up times for the kids — they can wake up before 7, but they're not allowed to wake us up before this time. The kids stopped napping when they went off to kindergarten, but my husband and I never gave up! Now it's a quiet time on weekends when the kids can entertain themselves, and we can get some daytime rest.

ML: I’m a notoriously bad sleeper, but my Lahgo sleep mask is a game changer – it’s so soft, and blocks out light really well. I also got an 8 Sleep system that cools the bed and I’ve found that it really helps me stay asleep.

What helps you feel confident during your off-hours?

AM: While work and parenting figure prominently into my life, I really derive confidence and joy from the more intimate parts of my day. I find that it connects more to feeling physically, emotionally, creatively fulfilled. Being in good shape allows me to dress in a way that makes me feel confident and comfortable, so working out and eating well certainly contributes to my overall sense of contentment. I also crave alone time to recharge and satisfy creative needs — things like cooking, reading, and making (or just engaging with) art help me feel like the best version of myself. It's like exercise for my brain, stretching it in ways my professional demands don't.

ML: Like I said, scent is big for me – wearing a nice cologne helps me feel more confident and like myself, even during my off-hours. Can’t go wrong with Maison Francis Kurkdjian.

Describe how you would spend an entire day in bed.

AM: Now we're talking. Catch me watching TV, reading, and probably being alone most of the time — maybe the occasional hug visit from the family. I'd also put together some of my favorite meals, like a Macho salad (inspired by Honor Bar, it's romaine, goat cheese, and all the toppings), or just splurge on Sugarfish. Oh, and you can't forget some Rori's ice cream!

ML: I rarely do this at home (though maybe I should…), but on vacation I love lounging in bed with a book, maybe even ordering in some room service.

It’s the end of the day and you’re chilling on the couch — what are you drinking? Reading? Watching?

AM: Sparkling water, a hot cup of Bengal Spice Tea, or a cocktail featuring my favorite gin from AMASS, depending on the mood. Usually reading some kind of historical fiction!

ML: Naturally, I’m drinking an AMASS cocktail. At home, that usually means a negroni or a gin and tonic, since they’re impossible to mess up and don’t require any fussy bar equipment.

AMASS, based in Los Angeles, makes clean botanics for modern life, elevating everyday social and self-care rituals through the power of plants.

Lahgo is a menswear brand engineering elevated lounge and sleepwear. Their pieces are intended to help men prioritize their self-care, achieve more effective downtime, and unlock their best selves with advanced, sustainable fabrics.

Coming together for a meal is an important ritual across households. It’s a time for us to slow down, review our day, and enjoy our favorite foods and drinks. Whether you’re dining out or cooking at home AMASS, has the perfect botanic spirits to complement all of your meals. Take your pick from some of our favorite combinations:

Oysters with a Martini.

You can never go wrong with a classic combo like oysters and a martini. The quick burn of brine and vinegar complement the floral notes of chamomile and the zest of lemon in our AMASS Botanic vodka martini. For larger oysters we recommend a more drinkable, lower abv martini.

Garlic Parmesan pasta with a Negroni.

Herbaceous gin meets the fruity, nutty flavor of parmesan. Dry gin and parmesan cheese are a perfect match, and a simple garlicky pasta is sure to delight your taste buds. We recommend finishing your meal with a sip of this refreshingly sweet sunshine negroni made with AMASS Dry Gin and topped with Sun Sign.

Lamb Curry with Gin and Tonic.

If you love a little spice, this is the pairing for you. Fragrant spices like coriander, cumin, paprika, and cayenne lead the way in this tasty dish that is partnered with the bubbly, citrus-forward welcome of AMASS Dry Gin and tonic water. If you prefer your curry on the spicy side, the fizzy flavor can even add an extra kick to your meal.

Espresso Martini and Chocolate Covered Pretzels.

No dinner is complete without dessert. An espresso martini is the perfect complement to sea salt and chocolate. Let the flavors of espresso and chocolate blend together in your mouth for the perfect sweet bite and an epic night cap. Try dark chocolate covered pretzels for an even more decadent flavor.

Three to four times a year we hear the dreaded phrase: Mercury is in retrograde. These words strike fear in some, but what’s actually occurring is not so scary at all. Simply explained, Mercury is in retrograde when it appears to move backwards. It's an astrological sensation when fast-moving Mercury, which typically spends 88 days in orbit around the sun compared to Earth’s 365, appears to move West to East instead of East to West.

Although Mercury moving backwards is only an optical illusion, the areas of life that Mercury dictates, including communication, travel, and rationality, can be thrown into chaos during this time. From unexpected texts from your ex, to missing your flight, when this astrological phenomenon occurs things tend to go haywire.

Luckily, Mercury is only in retrograde for three to four weeks, however the chaos can begin and end at different times. Mercury Retroshade is described as the two week time period before and after Mercury goes into retrograde. Before it begins, communication mishaps are more likely to happen, so it's not a bad idea to prepare by cleaning your electronics and rescheduling any big decision-making plans. The period after retrograde is viewed more positively however, as the fog clears, and clarity is regained. This is a good time to reflect on any lessons that were learned and revisit decisions that were put on hold.

Not all are easily affected by this time of transition. Those born during a period of retrograde may feel a sense of lucidity during this time of chaos. This may explain why those of us not born during retrograde may be on edge, while others seemingly thrive.

So what do we do about the astrological chaos that is thrust upon us three to four times a year? While there isn’t much we can do to avoid it, we can prepare ourselves for the disarray. Astrologists recommend that you relax the mind through journaling and meditation. Here at AMASS, we recommend unwinding with a cocktail and a soothing soak. Whatever will help you keep your sanity while Mercury is in retrograde, just relax and know that you’re not alone in the turmoil.

From morning cleansing to nighttime pampering, we spend more time in front of the mirror in our bathrooms than we may realize. This time is sacred and typically devoted to self care, so how do we maximize the potential of this space? Here’s a guide for how to style your bathroom:

1. Keep things clean.

Sometimes less is more. A crowded bathroom counter may result in an overworked mind. Invest in chic containers to hold and conceal all your essentials and try to keep only what you use everyday out on display.

2. Visualize your routine.

If you like to entertain or just love feeling pampered in your own bathroom, having a functional setup is a must. Visualize your daily routines and think about what you need at every step. Make sure to keep essentials like hand soap, towels, and lotion accessible. Bonus points if you include cotton swabs for quick touch ups, a hook for grooming tools, and a basket with extra bathroom tissue.

3. No nonscents.

Smell is one of the most important elements of your bathroom, but there can also be a visual appeal. Consider keeping a candle, incense, or room spray out on your counter to keep your bathroom smelling fresh. If you’re a candle fanatic, try repurposing your empty candle containers for a toothbrush holder or knick knack catcher.

4. Spruce it up.

Last but not least, make your bathroom yours by including your favorite pieces. Our favorite ways to make the bathroom feel more posh include adding a vase of fresh flowers, or a grab and go tray with your favorite jewelry, fragrances, or aftershave.

We’re no strangers to the world of flora at AMASS. For home decoration or as a gift, a beautiful bouquet of flowers is the best way to brighten anyone's day. Although store bought bouquets get the job done, crafting a unique bunch makes a gift or home decor moment extra special. Enter: our AMASS flower specialist and Social & Community Strategist, Caitlin Zenisek. Follow Caitlin’s tips for building a flower arrangement here:

1. How did you get into bouquet making and creating flower arrangements? Is there a source of inspiration you pull from?

I’ve always loved the way a beautiful bouquet of flowers can make such a big impact on someone’s day, particularly mine! We tend to send or receive flowers for celebrations, milestones, or on days we need some extra joy, but I think flowers should be an everyday thing. I genuinely am happier when my home is blooming with arrangements in every room. I also love that you don’t need to be an expert - there is no right or wrong way to put together a beautiful bouquet, you just need some creativity. I follow a few florists on instagram that I really admire. @raphverrion is the head florist at Soho Farmhouse and his playfulness and sense of whimsy is everything! Other accounts I love are @theunlikelyflorist, @hart_floral, and @lambertfloralstudio (although I could go on and on)!

2. Flowers are obviously the most important element of a bouquet. Where do you find yours and how do you decide which to pick?

I always start at the farmers market! Most of the time, I’ll stick to my usual color palette of greens and whites (I love how fresh they make my space feel), but if something really special or kind of funky catches my eye, I’ll just start grabbing stems until I feel like I like the direction I’m headed. I like to pay attention to balance in terms of texture, color, height, and weight to make a well rounded bouquet.

3. Walk us through your process–how do you prep, create, and then finish your bouquets?

Once you get your flowers home, the first step is to pick your vase. This will determine how you prep your stems. Before you start arranging, remove any leaves or foliage that fall below the waterline of your vase, and trim each stem with scissors on an angle. This will help your flowers drink more water, and prevent any bacterial growth to keep your bouquet fresher, longer.

Once your flowers and greenery are prepped, start adding your flowers to your vase! I rotate my vase as I work to make sure the arrangement looks beautiful from every angle. Start with your thickest or sturdiest flowers to create a bit of an anchor, then work your way towards the more dainty ones. I always finish by filling in any gaps with extra greenery. Once you’re happy with how your bouquet looks, pick a pretty focal point in your home and admire your work!

Replace the water in your vase every day or two–this will really help get the longest life out of your flowers. After about a week, I start to remove any dying flowers and rearrange as necessary.

4. Are there any tips or tricks you’d like to share that help facilitate the process?

Some of my favorite bouquets come out of trips to the farmers market where I come home with a totally random selection of flowers, greenery, and even edible elements like fresh herbs or branches with berries. Don’t be afraid to try something new! And of course, just enjoy yourself. I find flowers to be very therapeutic - I’m usually doing my arrangements on a Sunday afternoon with music on and coffee (or a more boozy beverage) in hand, when I’m really relaxed and enjoying the process! The more creative you get, the more fun you’ll have!

Sharing a drink is a powerful way to bring people together. But it’s often music that keeps us there, setting the mood and enhancing these shared moments with friends. With that in mind, here’s how to craft your perfect playlist for your upcoming summer soirees:

1. Identify the intent.

Is this an intimate dinner party, or a full blown block party? The distinction is important, and will dictate the kind of playlist you put together. For smaller gatherings, curating a collection of songs that don’t distract from your conversation while also setting the right tone is key (are you going for a chill hang or a fancy dinner, for instance?). A big party, meanwhile, requires danceable tracks that keep the energy up.

2. Know your audience.

As the party-appointed DJ, it’s not your job to appeal to everyone’s music sensibilities, but curating a playlist around your friends’ tastes will help ensure everyone is having a good time. Don’t be afraid to span genres within one playlist, so long as you're mindful of how the songs flow into the next. Country, hip hop, sad girl indie – it can all coexist when done right.

3. Make it longer than you think.

Making your playlist a little longer than you think it needs to be gives you the flexibility to skip over songs that miss the mark while ensuring you’re not repeating the same songs over and over in a loop. Parties rarely run shorter than you think they will, so building a bigger playlist means you can go into the wee hours of the night.

4. Find your flow.

Most parties ebb and flow in a similar fashion; there’s the quiet catching up at the beginning as you intercept bottles of wine and find your footing. Then, once the food and drinks get going and stories are passed back and forth, the energy picks up, requiring a collection of upbeat tracks to keep the party going. And then, as the night peters out, there’s the deeper moments, the “how are you really?” conversations that require a soundtrack that can fade into the background. Of course, it’s not an exact science, but following this framework can help keep the music matching the mood.

Looking for a ready-made playlist? Here’s our Dry Gin, distilled into a playlist that pairs perfectly with a dirty martini.

The stresses of modern life sometimes require a more elaborate nightly ritual; a way to demarcate day from night and truly unwind. And in the summer, as temperatures swell and we get our fair share of sun, our self-care routines often revolve around keeping our skin nice and supple. Here are our tried and true rituals for smooth summer skin:

1. Dry brush.

Slough off dry skin and get the blood moving with a quick scrub from a dry brush. This will prime skin to soak up nourishing botanical oils, and help ease some of the tension that’s accumulated throughout the day.

2. Soak.

Swirl a handful of our Forest Bath Salts into a tub with running warm water. Formulated with sweet almond and apricot kernel oils, these salts deeply nourish the skin. Meanwhile, Himalayan pink, Pacific Sea, and Epsom salts relieve tension, relax muscles, and act as a gentle exfoliator.

3. Apply lotion.

As you dry off, apply a generous amount of our Botanic Lotion from your shoulders to your toes. Coconut oil helps to lock in moisture, while sweet almond oil, rich in polyphenol antioxidants, conditions and soothes the appearance of dry skin. You’ll be left with silky smooth skin, and enveloped in the scent of cinnamon, basil, or lemon.

Looking to further elevate your bath experience? Turn to our guide to a soothing soak here.

Summer is here, and there’s no better way to ring in the season than basking in the light on the longest day of the year. Here are the midsummer rituals we’re practicing to celebrate this year’s summer solstice.

1. BURN BABY BURN.

The summer solstice is all about honoring the sun, and symbolically at least, fire is an extension of that. Bask in the glow of a bonfire, play with sparklers, or light candles around your home. Whatever you choose, set your intentions for the rest of the year as the flame flickers.

2. PARTY ALL NIGHT.

Traditionally, the shortest night of the year has been a time to party, staying up until the sun rises on the 21st or 22nd. Our advice? Go dancing, throw a beach bonfire party, and drink up – this time won’t come for another 365 days.

3. SETTLE IN FOR A SOAK.

If you prefer a leisurely evening in over an all night rager, consider settling in for a long soak in the tub. The meditative experience of turning off all the lights, running some warm water, and soaking in the soothing scent of eucalyptus and fir is the perfect way to clear your mind.

4. TAKE A WALK.

Flowers are symbols of the solstice, so in celebration surround yourself with burgeoning buds on a walk through your neighborhood or a nearby botanical garden as a way to ground yourself and stay connected with the changing of seasons.

5. PICNIC WITH SUMMER PRODUCE.

Celebrate the abundance of the season with a homemade meal featuring fresh summer produce. Honey is the symbol of the June moon, but other June blooms like asparagus, tomatoes, and peaches are also fit for feasting on this June 20th.

Candle care seems simple enough, until your flame starts sputtering and smoking. Here’s how to avoid that, plus four other tips on how to keep your candles burning clean.

1. Burn for at least two hours.

To avoid tunneling, it’s important to let your candle burn until the entire surface has evenly melted, otherwise you’ll end up with an unpleasant ring of unmelted wax. For an 8 oz candle like ours, that usually means burning it for about two hours, though you can let it burn up to four hours if you really want the scent to fill the room. Just make sure you’re keeping an eye on it, and avoid going much longer than four hours; extensive burn times can thin your wax, put off soot, and damage the oils in your candle.

2. Trim the wick.

You know that part of your wick that looks like a burnt piece of popcorn? It’s called a mushroom, and burning it results in a large smoky flame. To cut down on all that and have a cleaner, more even burn, use scissors periodically to trim your wick down to 0.25 inches, being careful not to trim so far that the wax covers the wick. Once your candle gets pretty low on wax, swapping in a wick trimmer for scissors will help you reach deep into the vessel.

3. Put out the flame carefully.

Candle snuffers exist for a reason; they gently extinguish the flame while minimizing smoke, preserving the lovely aroma that the candle has produced. If you don’t have a snuffer though, don’t sweat it. Just be sure to carefully blow out your candle with a small amount of air so that the wax doesn’t splatter everywhere.

4. Keep it out of the sun.

Exposure to direct sunlight and high heat leads to some sad, melted candles, accelerating their aging process and ultimately weakening their fragrance. Instead, keep your candles out of the rays and in a cool, dark place like a drawer or cabinet when they’re not burning. Too pretty to put away? Leaving your candles out on your coffee table is totally fine if you’re going through them fast; just make sure they’re not up against a window.

5. Upcycle your vessels.

Resist the temptation to burn every last drop of wax, as doing so could overheat the candle and lead to breakage. Instead, follow our tips on how to properly upcycle your candle, and use the leftover vessel to corral everything from makeup brushes to pens to your toothbrush.

 

 

Hard Seltzer

Our aluminum hard seltzer cans are wrapped in labels. To improve each can’s recyclability, remove these labels by cutting down their seam with scissors or a knife. Crush the can and toss it in the recycling bin, along with the cardboard case packs.

Dry Gin, Botanic Vodka, & Riverine

Our spirits bottles are made with quality materials so you can continue to reuse them around your home, whether as flower vases or candle holders. If you’re going through quite a few bottles though (we know the feeling…), you can recycle the ones you don’t need by simply tossing them in the recycling bin, no label removal necessary.

Hand Sanitizer

Our hand sanitizer bottles are made with PET, one of the most widely used and therefore most recyclable plastics. Recycle them once they’re empty, or if you’re using our portable 2oz sprays, stock up on refills.

Soap & Forest Bath Salts

Made of tinted glass, the vessels for our botanic soaps and bath salts are made for reusing. While totally recyclable, these containers would love a second life, whether to house your reusable cotton pads (for Forest Bath) or as a small bud vase (for our soaps).

Candles

The first step in recycling or upcycling candles is to remove any remaining wax. Pour boiling water into your candle vessel and let it cool until the wax on the bottom begins to rise to the top. Remove the hardened wax, pour out the water, and you’ve got yourself a clean vessel perfect for holding makeup brushes, pens, or your toothbrush. On the off chance you’re ready to part with your candle, the matte black glass is totally recyclable.

Throughout history, countless spices and herbs have been touted as love potions, placed under pillowcases and swallowed as tinctures to attract romance. While the efficacy of these natural aphrodisiacs has been debated for centuries, more and more scientific studies have proven the power of plants to boost libido.

Here are the botanicals we turn to in the bedroom:

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) — There’s nothing sexy about stress. That’s why we love ashwagandha, a powerful adaptogenic plant that regulates cortisol levels, keeping stress and fatigue at bay. In fact, the word ashwagandha in Sanskrit loosely means “the smell and strength of a horse.” While the smell is rather literal, the strength winkingly refers to the plant’s aphrodisiac qualities.

 

Basil (Ocimum basilicum) — Researchers aren’t quite sure what makes basil such a pleasurable plant, but we’re thinking its naturally heady, sensuous scent has something to do with it. A common botanical in aromatherapy, sweet basil has the power to stimulate and uplift the senses, making it a perfect food for getting in the mood.

 

Cacao (Theobroma cacao) — You can thank cacao for the tradition of gifting your lover heart-shaped bonbons come February 14th. Used in the production of chocolate, cacao is rich in anandamide, otherwise known as the bliss chemical. While its feel-good effects are diminished in the roasting process, raw cacao is downright titillating.

 

Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) — During the Medieval and Renaissance periods, coriander seeds were often added to wine to increase desire and stimulate passion. The plant is famous for its mention in Arabian Nights, where it was used to cure a merchant of impotence.

 

Ginseng (Panax ginseng) — One of the most powerful natural aphrodisiacs, ginseng has long been held up in traditional Chinese medical practices for its ability to enhance sexual behavior. In addition to upping desire, it’s purported to support reproductive capabilities and treat sexual dysfunction.

 

Reishi Mushroom (Ganoderma lucidum) — Like ashwagandha, Reishi mushroom is a potent adaptogen that works wonders in mellowing the mind. The magic mushroom increases fertility and overall sexual performance, even supporting the kidney and urinary function, which in Chinese medicine are believed to be the homes of one’s sexual power.

 

It’s February. Which, if you’ve been keeping track, means that Dry January – the month of mocktails – is long gone. But unlike the lofty resolutions that we’re happy to leave behind, low- to no-proof cocktails are here to stay.

Dry January has existed in some form or another for nearly a century, when the Finnish government launched a “Sober January” campaign in the ‘40s as part of the war effort. After that, the years came and went. Drinks were drunk. And then, some time in the late aughts, the movement reemerged, this time as a way to make up for the excessive imbibing of the holiday season and start the new year off right after the last drop of the New Year’s champagne was drunk.

In 2014, the British nonprofit Alcohol Concern officially trademarked the term “Dry January.” The name and concept stuck, and today millions of people around the world pledge to stay sober for the first month of the year.

This past January felt different, though. Of course it did.

In a Nielson poll from this year, 13% of American respondents said they were skipping the spirits this January. Unsurprisingly, the number is up from last year, following the trend of the growing sober and sober curious movement. But it’s more than that. While in years past Dry January has served as a time to undo all the eggnog from the month prior, this year it’s an answer to nearly 10 months of over-imbibing and overindulging at home.

We’ve been drinking a lot. Our nightly cocktail has served not only as an escape, but as a ritual, a celebration, a way to demarcate day and night. We order to-go cocktails when we’re craving community, we drink glasses of Pinot when it’s isolation and introspection that we seek. The close of our laptops at 5pm is accompanied by the now very familiar crack of a can.

For many of us, Dry January this year gently pushed us to call into question and reevaluate our relationship with drinking. It spurred us to check in on ourselves – really – by asking questions like, How does my body feel? My mind? Am I taking care of myself? How do I find moments of peace, calm, and even pleasure?

That’s all to say, we’re not not drinking necessarily, but maybe just drinking a little less alcohol, a little less often, and a little more thoughtfully. That means cleaner cocktails, zero-proof spirits, and low-abv alternatives to our typical boozy fare.

We’re making Dry January not just a month, but a state of mind.

The beauty of a bath is greater than the sum of its parts. Sure, there’s water. You’re naked. The lights are dimmed. But beyond the logistical elements that accompany tub time, a long soak can be truly transformative if done right. Here are our tips to give your body and brain the rest they need, all with the help of a little warm water.

1. Use salts.

Bubbles are fun, but they also strip the skin of much-needed moisture. Instead, use some bath salts. The benefits of swirling a handful of salts in your bath are threefold: rich in therapeutic minerals, natural sea and Epsom salts relieve tension, relax muscles, and gently exfoliate. Meanwhile, nourishing oils like sweet almond and apricot kernel help quench the skin, while soothing essential oils of eucalyptus and amber create a mind-mellowing environment.

2. Light a candle.

You know what’s not part of the bath time vibe? Fluorescent lights. Turn them off and instead strike a match on your favorite candle, letting the slow flicker of candlelight lull you into a meditative state. Pick a scent that suits the mood – notes of lavender, chamomile, and palo santo can help you relax, while brighter botanicals like grapefruit and vetiver can stimulate your senses.

3. Turn on the tunes.

Or a podcast. Or an audiobook. Or your go-to meditation app. Whatever rhythmic voice sets you into a slower pace and helps you disconnect from the world beyond your bathroom door is fine by us. Maybe skip the true crime podcast, though.

3. Drink up.

Last but not least, offset your steamy soak with an ice-cold drink. Pour yourself a Riverine and Tonic for ultimate herbal refreshment minus the booze, or keep it classic with a Spanish G&T, a Gin and Tonic adorned with a bevy of garnishes, like rosemary, grapefruit, and mint.

Getting out into the great outdoors does our brains and bodies a lot of good. The sights, smells, and sounds that accompany a trek through the woods have the ability to ease stress, clear the mind, and release feel-good endorphins. That much we know. But what is it about time spent amidst the trees that soothes the soul?

The Japanese have a term for it: shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing. The term essentially means to take in the forest atmosphere through your senses. It arose in the 1980s as an answer to the tech burnout culture that was just beginning thanks to the advent of the personal computer. By the ‘90s, Japanese researchers were conducting studies into the science behind this form of ecotherapy.

Their findings elucidated a lot of the hunches we already had about the power of plants to heal, and included these three main health benefits:

1.  Bathing boosts our immune system.

Beyond providing a soothing smell, coniferous trees like cedars, spruces, and firs release phytoncides, airborne oils that, when breathed in, increase activity of virus-fighting white blood cells.

2.  Tree time reduces stress.

The power of plants runs so deep that even looking at a photo of trees has some mind-mellowing effects. But actually getting out there in the green can help lower stress-inducing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline even more.

3.  Immerse in the forest to focus up.

Giving our eyes a break from our screens and instead taking a gander at some good old fashioned flora can help give the cognitive portion of our brains a much-needed breather and cut down on attention fatigue.

Moral of the story: the practice of forest bathing is an important, potent salve. That said, some of its benefits can still be achieved within the confines of your apartment (we’re looking at you, house plants).

Our latest Forest Bath Salts allow you to soak in the forest from your tub, for moments when the mountains are calling, but you actually can’t go.

We spend a lot of time thinking about plants. And while our list of go-to sources on the subject runs long, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal – a botanical index dating back to 1643 – remains our most frequently-visited resource. Despite being published nearly 400 years ago, the encyclopedic guide to botanicals is a treasure trove of trusted herbal wisdom.

The names of the entries alone, from Bastard Rhubarb to Field Mouse Ear Scorpion Grass, should be enough to pique your interest, but on the off chance they’re not, we decided to do a little digging into the man behind the plants: the bad boy of botany himself, Nicholas Culpeper.

Born in 1616, Nicholas Culpeper was an English botanist and astrologer who paired plants with planetary influences to treat his patients. As a child, he loved his grandfather’s collection of clocks, which spurred a deep interest in astrology and time. Through his youth and young adulthood, he obsessively read medical texts from his grandfather’s library and spent hours in the fields and forests of the English countryside cataloguing countless herbs with the intent of garnering enough knowledge to publish his findings.

Culpeper worked as an apprentice for an apothecary for seven years before getting married in 1640 to Alice Field, the heiress of an affluent grain merchant. Their courtship allowed Culpeper to establish his own pharmacy in Spitalfields, London at a time when medical facilities were sparse and faltering.

An unabashed skeptic, Culpeper constantly questioned traditional medicine, calling for a return to pharmaceuticals’ herbal origins. He vehemently shunned the medical practices of the time, once saying,

"This not being pleasing, and less profitable to me, I consulted with my two brothers, Dr. Reason and Dr. Experience, and took a voyage to visit my mother Nature, by whose advice, together with the help of Dr. Diligence, I at last obtained my desire; and, being warned by Mr. Honesty, a stranger in our days, to publish it to the world, I have done it."

He argued that “no man deserved to starve to pay an insulting, insolent physician,” and so Culpeper offered his medical services gratis.

Unlike other contemporary physicians who resisted visiting patients in person, instead relying on urine samples to diagnose and treat illness, Culpeper saw as many as 40 patients in a single morning. To him, “as much piss as the Thames might hold” was not enough to effectively identify symptoms and treat his patients with the attention and care required.

Culpeper’s herbal remedies included many botanicals, including anemone to treat leprosy, bedstraw to act as an aphrodisiac, and burdock to soothe tooth pain. Other, less esoteric ingredients were used as well – chamomile, juniper, parsley being just a few among hundreds of other botanicals.

While time has taught us that some of Culpeper’s methods – like, say, prescribing walnuts to treat neurological ailments simply because they look like miniature brains – may not be the most effective, we still believe fully in the power of plants to transform the humdum rituals of modern life. We think that’s something Culpeper could get behind, too.

We are constantly bombarded with productivity hacks – tips and tricks on how to cross everything off our to-do lists while also being a person/partner/colleague/parent. Here at AMASS, though, we are far more interested in how people get undone. We want to know the nightly rituals that happen after 5PM, from the cocktails drunk to the books read. To us, it’s those small moments behind the scenes that really count, because in them lies a glimpse into who we want to be.

This time around, we chatted with AMASS Co-Founder and Master Distiller Morgan McLachlan about the ways she copes with her busy work schedule while balancing motherhood (and how she carves out time for nature in between).

Between being a new mom and building a botanics brand, you’re busier than ever. How are you coping with your packed schedule?

I think I’m doing very well, considering the circumstances. I’m definitely experiencing a special type of exhaustion, but I haven’t had a typical COVID experience in that I’ve been busier than ever before. Some things get sacrificed, mostly personal time, but it’s okay. As my grandfather says, if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person.

What are the rituals you practice to take care of yourself?

Between being a new mom and working full time, I don’t exactly have a lot of bandwidth for some of the old ways that I used to care for myself, and I do work in the evenings after my baby goes to sleep. By great providence, however, a lot of my favorite simple self-care rituals could be categorized as work, and vice versa. I’m fortunate that the product categories we are working in are conducive to “getting undone.” Anytime I develop a product, I try to experience a good expanse of products that are in the market in that particular category, as well as road-testing products and concoctions that I have in development. To me, experiencing and analyzing both personal care products, and also food and beverage, is an act of mindfulness. What do I like about this product? What don’t I like about this product? What feeling or memory does this fragrance evoke? Understanding the more impalpable qualities of sensory attributes is a decided act of mindfulness. Lately, in the name of product development duties, I’ve been taking a lot of baths! I feel like my natural habitat is a hot tub. And to kill two birds with one stone, I’ve been “testing” beverage products, while I’m in the bath. That is sort of my peak relaxation experience, or at least it has been in the last year. 

These days, I’m typically doing more focused research. I’ll be reading books that are tangentially related to what we’re working on. Recently, I read a beautiful autobiography by Jean-Claude Ellena, the famed perfumer at Hermès. There’s another really great book called The Way We Lived, which is a first person aural account from the indigenous people of California about what life was like, from pre-colonization through colonization to now. That’s been a really interesting book for me, since I have an interest in indigenous plants. Generally speaking, I do a lot of my tangential research, which I really adore, in the evenings when I can sit down and focus and I’m not distracted by Slack or the baby or meetings. 

Before I fall asleep, I do a little meditation that’s a combination of different styles of meditation that I developed for myself. I’ve been doing it for about 20 years now. It’s a personal thing, but it centers and grounds me. I usually fall asleep during it because I’m so exhausted [laughs]. I’m also a big fan of adaptogens, so I sometimes use a combination of light relaxing herbs to go to sleep: lately it has been a combination of passion flower, l-theanine derived from green tea, and ashwagandha. It’s not exciting, but it’s what my evenings look like. It’s all just in a condensed amount of time, because I have a yelling, screaming baby. 

How are you finding connection in the midst of this period of isolation?

Because I’m both working and taking care of [my son] Arthur, I have less than an hour to myself every day. I find that lately I have only had time to connect to my immediate family. In the evenings, my partner comes home, and I love watching him and Arthur play together. It’s sort of our only time together as a family, so that’s really nice. I love bedtime with Arthur – playing with him in the evening is really special. It’s crazy having a kid, but they teach you how to be present. 

To be honest, thank goodness for FaceTime. I’ll try to FaceTime with my family as much as possible, but I will say with my limited bandwidth I’ve been a bad friend. There’s a lot of friends that I just haven’t been able to have the usual connection with, because I’ve been so busy with work and the baby. My hope is that soon I will have a little more time to connect with my friends, which obviously I used to do a lot more in the evenings. But it’s kind of been like triage. I FaceTime my grandparents, and obviously I FaceTime Arthur’s grandparents because they’re crazy about him. I text a bit with friends. But I can’t be hard on myself – I’m doing my best with everything. 

What restorative role does nature play in your life?

Nature is the most important thing to me, and it’s where I feel most at peace and comfortable. The great thing about LA is you can get out into nature and immerse yourself in all sorts of different microclimates (depending on which direction you go) pretty easily.  We haven’t been able to do that too much lately, but I’m lucky in that I live in this area within the city that has its own really incredible little microclimate. The property I live on has tons of trees, and I can at least get outside and hang out in the trees and look at the stars every night. 

It’s Sunday night and you’re vegging on the couch–what are you drinking? Reading?

It’s funny, in normal circumstances I would probably have a martini or a glass of Gamay, but my alcohol tolerance is still very low from not drinking during my pregnancy, so I might just have a glass of something in the beverage category that I am working on. Lately that is hard seltzer, since I am currently working on hard seltzer formulas. I really love aperitivos, so I might have a spritz or something like that in the summer months. 

My mother was a nonfiction and a literary editor, so whether it is by nature or nurture, I’m a voracious reader, but I just haven’t had the time to read much fiction lately, which I mourn. I actually think reading fiction is more important to developing intelligence and neural pathways than reading anything else, or even studying anything. I really think reading fiction is the best thing you can do for your heart and for your brain.

Want to learn more about Morgan? Read her full feature here.

Sustainability was our top priority when designing our spirits bottles. We sought to build beautiful vessels that honored the natural botanicals inside of them, being both of the earth and for the earth. Our bespoke glass bottles were coated with organic inks by a decorator in Arques, France in order to improve their recyclability, so you can dispose of the packaging thoughtfully.

While our bottles are 100% recyclable, they’re also designed to be upcycled. The matte black and grey finishes and quality materials lend themselves to decorating the corners of your home, from the kitchen to the bedroom. Just remove the label with some good old fashioned soap and hot water, or leave it au natural with the label intact if that’s more your style.

Olive Oil Bottle — Our opaque vessels are perfect for housing grocery store olive oils and vinegars, as the UV-protected glass keeps out harsh rays that can break down oil over time. Plus, they’re sleek enough to keep on your kitchen countertops.

Bud Vase — Beautiful buds are the natural foil to our clean, minimal packaging. We love the look of lavender in our grey vodka bottles for a serene color story, while earthier blooms like eucalyptus contrast nicely against the cool black finish of our gin.

Candle Holder — Perch classic white candlesticks in the mouth of our bottles for an instantly dramatic tablescape. As the candle burns, hot wax will drip onto the bottle, giving a moody feel that makes for a spooky yet sophisticated centerpiece

How do you reuse your AMASS bottles? Tag us @amass.botanics so we can share your AMASSterpieces.

Architecture is at odds with nature. Condominiums are built in the ashes of meadows, parking lots on the beds of forests. To design is to undo. To build is to take away. And so treetops are phased out in favor of sharp lines and concrete.

But within that rigid dichotomy, there are architects and designers striving to bridge the divide between the natural and the man-made. They seek out innovative solutions to incorporate a site’s landscape into the final design; boulders exist in internal spaces, trees are rooted in courtyards, medieval moats are made modern. The natural and artificial commingle and are made better for it.

While many modern-day architects use organic materials and glean inspiration from native structures, the following designers and firms create strictly with the intent to preserve. In this new sustainable mode of design, cliffsides are not obliterated, but carved to fit a space for something human.

Peter Zumthor

Take a look at the exterior of a Peter Zumthor building and prepare to be unimpressed. The Swiss architect’s work is notoriously spare, devoid of the flashiness we’ve come to expect from architecture bigwigs like Frank Gehry and Norman Foster. There are no elaborate skyscrapers or sculptural amphitheaters. But inside Zumthor’s buildings, entire worlds unfold.

Built in 1996, Zumthor’s Therme Vals is a hotel and spa situated over the only thermal springs in the Graubünden Canton in Switzerland. Like most Zumthor works, the exterior is stark, utilizing harsh grey stone to mirror the cold landscape of the Swiss countryside.

In conceptualizing the spa, Zumthor’s initial idea was to build a structure that mirrored the form of a cave or quarry, marrying the site’s Valser Quarzite slabs and water into a space designed for guests to luxuriate.

“Mountain, stone, water – building in the stone, building with the stone, into the mountain, building out of the mountain, being inside the mountain – how can the implications and the sensuality of the association of these words be interpreted, architecturally?”

— Peter Zumthor

The result is a space revered for participating so seamlessly in the transcendental experience of a hot spring. In Zumthor’s world, senses are heightened: the sound of bubbling water, the touch of hot stones, the dramatic contrast of darkness and light at every turn. It’s a space that very much is what it is – one governed by element and ritual.

Peruse Zumthor’s body of work and you’ll notice this is not incidental – he has a thing for site-specific materiality. Perhaps his most famous work, Bruder Klaus Chapel in the rural countryside of Germany, utilizes natural elements of tree trunks and frozen molten lead to honor the patron saint Bruder Klaus. Tree trunks were bundled to form a wigwam and the interior wood was ignited to create a hollow space. The inside of the chapel shows residual texture and lingering char, pulling the gaze up to the open roof peering out at the night stars.

It is a fitting feature for a chapel, utilizing simple features to point us to a godly sky. It’s also classic Zumthor; a minimalist, naturalistic structure that is utterly uncompromising. From the wigwam formwork to the ignited interior, the construction of Bruder Klaus seems to follow Zumthor’s every farfetched whim. While this unflinching vision can make him somewhat of a controversial figure (Zumthor’s recent LACMA proposal landed him in hot water for being both outrageously expensive and reducing the gallery square footage), it’s also what makes him and his work so widely lauded.

Olson Kundig

Based in Seattle, Olson Kundig is a contemporary design firm whose work “expands the context of built and natural landscapes.” It’s a line taken straight from their website, and if it were any other firm, you could probably discard it as empty corporate-speak. But for Olson Kundig, it rings sincere.

When founding partner Jim Olson was 18, he bought a plot of land on Puget Sound amidst the towering forest and built a 200 square foot bunkhouse. That was in 1959. In the over 60 years between then and now, the cabin has undergone numerous remodels, each working with and around the surrounding trees. Three mature firs grow through openings in the deck, with one exiting through an opening in the roof. In this way, the interior blends seamlessly into the outdoors.

“Our homes and cities are as much a part of nature as birds’ nests and beehives. Our role as architects is to fit human life into the world in an intelligent and meaningful way.”

— Jim Olson

While Olson Kundig produces cultural and commercial buildings, they are best known for their exquisite residential homes. A personal favorite is the Costa Rica Treehouse, an open-air surfer hut built entirely of locally harvested teak. Inspired by the jungle, the structure engages with its surroundings at every level: “the ground floor opens to the forest floor, the middle level is nestled within the trees, and the top level rises above the tree canopy.”

The owners of the treehouse are avid environmentalists, and their commitment to sustainability reverberates throughout the home. A rainwater collection system, thoughtful shading, and a 3.5-kW photovoltaic array make the house’s environmental footprint even lighter. These features don’t exist simply to better the Earth, however. Each and every design choice is also made with human experience in mind.

“Architecture not only provides shelter but also enhances the human experience. It creates pleasure, provides meaning, and inspires. Buildings are an extension of our dreams and aspirations, being both about us and for us.”

— Jim Olson

This philosophy is central to Olson Kundig’s mission: a humanistic approach to sustainable design. Their buildings are extensions of the outdoors, connecting people to nature and serving as daily reminders that we are one with our environment, even when we’re in our own domestic cocoons.

Hariri & Hariri

Iranian-born sisters Gisue Hariri and Mojgan Hariri are known for imbuing each of their projects with a sense of “sensual modernism.” It’s a philosophy they picked up back when they were architecture students at Cornell in the ‘70s, and it’s one that’s served as a guiding light as they’ve designed everything from jewelry collections (for Swarovski) to architectural renderings (for an exhibit at the Guggenheim).

The Hariri sisters believe in architecture that awakens the senses, in taking natural elements and transforming them into a conduit for pleasure. They perhaps do this best with Jewels of Salzburg, a development that is less a development than it is a microcosm of the Austrian city itself.

Recipient of the American Architecture Award in 2015, the striking housing development is inspired by the natural elements of Salzburg. A small waterway cuts through the center of the miniature city, mimicking the Salzach River, while a rock face towers over the structure just as the defining mountains loom over Salzburg. The shrunken city offers more than just novelty, though.

The creek that cuts through the site acts as a natural boundary and guide, inviting the public through the space in a meditative journey. Water travels from the highest elevation of the site through a small waterfall, which serves as a collector of melting snow, icicles, and rock. From this pedestrian path, the splendor of the forest and rock face can be taken in.

And the buildings themselves? They simulate the rock formation, chiseled rocks stacked one on top of each other in a seemingly random fashion, just as they would sit on a quarry site.

“The buildings we have proposed here are set back from the rock-face. They hover over their bases just enough to create a tension from where one could almost reach out and touch the rock.”

— Hariri & Hariri

The resulting domiciliary maze is one that is in conversation with its surrounding landscape. Buildings bend to jutting rock formations, the creek winds its way around courtyards and terraces. It’s poetry, materialized. And while this structure is an indication of the Hariri’s own principles and design philosophies, it’s also an indication of where architecture is heading.

Gone are the days of architecture for architecture’s sake. In an age where forests are regularly being set ablaze and our planet is in shambles thanks to blatant denial and inaction from government officials and the continuous burning of fossil fuels, it’s not enough to simply design around nature. Instead, designers must ask themselves: how do we preserve what we already have? What steps must we take to remain connected to the nature that surrounds us? Where, and how, do we choose to build? And who will take us into this new tomorrow?

These architects may have some of the answers.

Morgan McLachlan grew up on the side of a mountain in Vancouver, a place so beautiful that when she visited Yosemite for the first time years ago she thought to herself, “Oh, this is just like where I grew up.” She spent most of her days under her grandparents’ watch, playing and hiking in the forest, forging what would become a lifelong relationship with plants.

It’s a childhood straight from the storybooks, and one that makes perfect sense once you know where Morgan is now: distilling spirits from botanicals growing in her Echo Park backyard here in Los Angeles. The most striking of the plants growing in her yard? The California Bay Leaf, a plant more commonly found in Northern California that somehow made its way down the coast, into Morgan’s backyard, and eventually into a bottle of AMASS Dry Gin.

Before she got her start as a distiller, Morgan followed in her father’s footsteps working in the film and television industry as a camera operator. At just 17-years-old, Morgan was the youngest person at the time working in IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and one of the only women. “It’s always interesting talking about gender issues if you just get into it by the numbers,” she says. “In IATSE, when I was in the union, it was five percent women.”

When she left the movie biz a decade later to pursue a career in distilling, she found herself yet again in the minority, although this time on her own terms. In 2012, Morgan co-founded The Spirit Guild, a DTLA-based distillery that specializes in making a variety of spirits from California’s diverse flora. Since founding the distillery, Morgan has helped build seven beverage brands, establishing herself as one of the leading independent distillers and, once again, one of the only women.

On why more women aren’t distillers, Morgan theorizes that most women are probably too intelligent for the job. “You’re basically a janitor,” she explains, citing the hours of cleaning and back-breaking labor as one of the reasons the industry has remained so male-dominated.

Morgan, though, is an exception to her own theory, proving that women–even and perhaps especially intelligent women–have a place in distilling. Growing up in British Columbia, Morgan knew what every plant was–which ones were poisonous, which were edible, the conditions they grew best in. So when she moved to Los Angeles over a decade ago, she sought to learn as much as she could about Southern California flora, striving to become a resident expert on the region’s lush terroir.

Morgan’s partner at the time came from an old California ranching family dating back to the 1860s, and Morgan’s knowledge of the area’s agriculture blossomed from that tie. She started experimenting with various botanicals, including citrus, something she thought couldn’t be distilled because she had never seen it done before. She went on to distill the first gin and vodka from clementines, an innovation that came from the simple question: “What would a spirit distilled in Southern California be made from?”

Unlike other distillers that prioritize experimentation above all else, Morgan knows that innovation can only follow knowledge. Distilling, much like filmmaking, relies heavily on craft, a now overused descriptor in the alcohol world that nonetheless remains the most precise, as it encompasses both technical skill and artistry. Morgan elucidates on the matter,

“You can be a really good technical distiller where the spirits you’re making are missing a certain je ne sais quoi. And then you can be a very artistic distiller, but if you don’t know the techniques or the traditions… you can make a very sloppy product… It’s sort of like art. You learn how to draw and then from there, once you know the aesthetic rules, if you break the rules you’re breaking them intentionally.”

Morgan certainly knows how to break the rules–she’s been doing it since she first started working in movies at 17. But she also understands that distilling tradition is rooted in historical context. Take bourbon, for example. Back in 1938, the Coopers Union Lobby prohibited the reusing of barrels in the production of bourbon in an effort to create jobs and spur the lagging timber industry. Now, nearly a century after the law was first put in place, we’ve become accustomed to the taste of New American, charred oak barrel bourbon. To discard the rules surrounding the production of bourbon would be to disrupt the unique, now-expected flavor of the liquor.

Trace back to the origins of most modern spirits and you’ll find a similar trajectory. What we eat and drink are reflective of the times before us, but also the times we live in now. And in order to be a thoughtful distiller, it’s important to understand the symbiotic relationship between what we make and who we are, not as individuals but as a collective.

Morgan is deeply concerned with this relationship, as is evidenced by her near encyclopedic knowledge on the history of distilling. And luckily for her, the times we live in now are a beautiful place to be on the spirits front. We’ve entered into an era of thoughtful consumption, with consumers caring deeply about what they’re putting into their bodies. The decentralization of distilling away from large industrial practices has freed makers from rigid spirits categories and allowed for unprecedented creativity and innovation. Our drinking traditions are evolving with our culture and taking us to places no one has thought to go before. The lines between non-alcoholic, low-alc, and traditional spirits are being blurred, giving consumers of all kinds an opportunity to connect.

That ability to connect over food and drink is what entices Morgan most. She tells me, “My family is Scottish, so we’re lucky if we get black pepper on our roast beef, maybe some horseradish [laughs]. If you look at the history of the spice trade, spices and botanicals were really the first thing people knew of other cultures. I think in general, food and beverage is a calling card of culture and is something everyone can appreciate and connect over.”

AMASS–a word that simply means “to gather”–celebrates the power drink has to bring people of all walks of life together. Here in Los Angeles, a multicultural city with a recently booming food and beverage scene, this rings especially true. So much of AMASS Dry Gin, AMASS’s premiere product and Morgan’s personal brainchild, is inspired by the natural terroir and diverse cultural landscape of LA. The city is felt in the spirit’s indigineous botanicals like California Bay and Cascara Sagrada, as well as in the worldy, vibrant flavors of hibiscus and cardamom. It’s not difficult to see the influence of place–it’s also not difficult to see the influence of Morgan.

Morgan never thought she’d become a distiller, nor did she ever think she’d live in Los Angeles. She tells me that on one trip to LA in her 20s, she met with a corporate psychic at 21st Century Fox, where her step-mother worked at the time. It was the early 2000s, and Morgan had big plans to move to Berlin and play in an art-rock band (on the keyboard, naturally), to which the psychic told her, “Oh honey, you’re not moving to Berlin. You’re moving to Los Angeles.” Morgan quickly disregarded the prediction: “I thought, well that’s funny, because I hate Los Angeles.” Within a few years, she was living here, sleeping on a friend’s couch, and attending parties in the Hills.  It’s a classic story of “little did she know…”, but I’d argue that it’s more than that–it’s a story of Morgan and her ongoing capacity to change, like a snake in the habit of shedding skins.

Since co-founding AMASS with CEO Mark Thomas Lynn in 2018, Morgan’s role has shifted several times over. Now AMASS’s Chief Product Officer and Master Distiller, Morgan is still in the business of distilling and developing spirits, but she now oversees larger business operations as well. It’s not an entirely new realm for her to inhabit–she learned the ins and outs of how to run a business when she first founded the Spirit Guild nearly a decade ago. Outside of the office, Morgan’s life is similarly in flux–she is expecting her first child this spring, to which she says,

“I don’t know what you’re supposed to do when you’re pregnant, but I’m just going to keep working.”

When I ask her about the new direction her life and career are taking, she responds earnestly, “I’m just really excited to do everything all the time.” And that’s the truth of it. It’s not that Morgan is striving to be the best–she knows better than to strive for such empty aspirations. Rather, it’s that she wants to be the most thoughtful distiller she can be.

Distilling, at its core, is about taking simple ingredients–herbs, spices, fruit–and transforming them into a conduit for the senses. And if there’s anyone well-suited for that job, it’s Morgan. She’s read all the books. She’s learned the hard lessons. And perhaps most importantly, she delights in creating quotidian pleasures through drink. It’s a passion that does not seem to be fading, even as AMASS continues to evolve. Morgan is currently in the process of developing an aperitivo, the brand’s first foray into the low-alc space. More products–including, eventually, a non-alcoholic one, as well as a line of botanic hand washes and lotions–are set to follow. Such tremendous change could overwhelm some, but Morgan remains nonplussed. In fact, it seems that this ongoing change is what excites her most, as in it lies the possibility to transform the way we connect.

Photos by Cara Robbins

We’re several weeks into quarantine, which means my supply of clean sweatpants is running low, tensions between family members are running high, and I’ve been drinking… a lot. I’m not the only one–in a New York Times article published last week, it was reported that Drizly, an alcohol-delivery service, has had its sales increase by 50 percent since news of COVID-19 began to spread.

I’ve seen similar trends within my immediate social circle–on a FaceTime call with a friend last week, we commiserated over our newfound lifestyle, with meal and drink time acting as an anchor for the otherwise mindless passing of days. I flipped the camera to display my ever-diminishing array of booze, an assortment of wine and liquor that had begun to overtake my rather large dining room table. An even more dismal sight was to be found in my recycling bin, which overfloweth with discarded bottles of pinot.

Pre-quarantine, I was maxxing out at 2–3 drinks per week–a glass of wine with dinner here, an after-work cocktail with a friend there. But about a week into work-from-home life, the ratio of days passed to drinks drank was inching closer to 1:1. It’s not that I was drinking as a way to dull the senses–although, yes, if there was ever a time to crave distraction, now was it. More than that though, I was reaching for a glass as a way to mark the hazy line between afternoon and night, work and play, weekday and weekend.

It’s something we do habitually–after hard days and in celebration of good ones, we drink to commemorate and signify a moment. It’s why happy hours exist, after all (which you can read more about here). If you want to and are able to, pouring a drink is not the worst way to maintain some semblance of normalcy during an unprecedented global pandemic. But there are other rituals to practice to stay sane (and safe) that don’t involve another trip to the liquor store…

1. Set the light

When you’re sitting in the same room day in and day out, mood lighting matters. Open up your blinds during the day and burn candles at night to keep the distinction between on and off crystal clear.

2. Put a pot on to boil

Whether you’re making pasta or a cup of tea, there is something about the gentle simmer and eventual bubbling of a pot of water that has the power to soothe. It’s a ritual I’ve found myself retreating to on days when it’s comfort I’m craving most.

3. Play some tunes

Instead of pouring a glass at the end of the day, put on a record or strum on a guitar. The effect is similar so long as you opt for smooth and easy music.

4. Read poetry aloud

When spoken, a poem can feel something like a prayer. Read to yourself, read to someone you love–read because the news is loud and the rest of the world feels a little too quiet right now.

5. Stretch, breathe

Get back in your body by touching your toes. It’s simple, but taking the time to slow down your breath and stretch your limbs can transport you to a calmer place.

6. Preserve your perishables

Make an afternoon out of pickling veggies and sauerkraut. It’s a meditative practice that’s good for salvaging any farmer’s market treasures you have hanging out in your crisper drawer.

7. Take sunset walks

With social distancing in mind, take walks down the side streets you don’t typically trek at the end of the workday.

8. Bubble a bath

Baths are the perfect way to escape–from your screens, from your roommate, from the messy corners of your home. Low light and soft sounds are key here.

9. Mindlessly play

Whether it’s watching Youtube videos or going deep into an Animal Crossing rabbit hole, give yourself permission to delight in the mindless pleasures you typically chide yourself for. In a time where so much of our headspace is being taken up by worry, granting yourself simple comforts is an essential practice.

There are a lot of reasons I love Thanksgiving. I love that the holiday spurs people to come together, gather around a table, and give thanks. I love eating pie and drinking wine and laying on the couch wearing sweatpants and socks while the Cowboys play on the television. I love the pride a family can have over a dish of sweet potatoes, how a bowl of cranberry sauce can be so much more than a bowl of cranberry sauce. It’s a day that aligns so strongly with my core values (family and food, namely) that I feel the temptation to ignore the rest. It’s easy to pretend Thanksgiving is devoid of problems when, up until pretty recently, there was little to no public discourse saying otherwise.

For a long time, the story of the first Thanksgiving has failed to acknowledge the very real story of colonization and massacre. It has glossed over the unpleasant realities and instead painted a picture of turkey and camaraderie, of a false friendship between the Pilgrims and the Native American people they displaced. And I feel a growing hesitancy to continue pretending that Thanksgiving is a day about coming together and holding hands when I can see, quite plainly now, all the ways it’s not that.

This growing hesitancy to celebrate Thanksgiving is a collective one, as evidenced by the general decline in young people taking part in holiday traditions. Even here at AMASS, with a team that loves nothing more than gathering together over food and drink, several members of our team have chosen to opt out of traditional Thanksgiving festivities, citing the holiday’s problematic history as the predominant reason. One member of our team spends the day making an assortment of dishes from all over the world, while another simply takes advantage of the time off work to visit her family in Northern California.

But for those of us who do celebrate, whether that be because of familial obligation or a genuine desire to spend a day giving thanks, how are we supposed to reconcile Thanksgiving’s gruesome history with our own passed-down traditions? And more importantly: is doing so even possible?

Having a day to gather with loved ones and reflect on what we’re thankful for is not, at its essence, a bad thing. In fact, it’s an essential practice, regardless of whether that moment of reflection takes place on the last Thursday of November or any other day. But if we are going to use Thanksgiving as a day to eat, drink, and give thanks with the people we love, it’s our responsibility to do so in a way that respects and acknowledges the pain felt by many in the Native community.

I’ve found through articles like this one and conversations with friends that there are actually many ways to acknowledge the problematic history of Thanksgiving. By remembering and talking about the first Thanksgiving as it really happened, taking the time to not only give thanks but to reflect on the lives lost, and donating to indigenous-rights organizations like these, we can work to reframe the narrative of Thanksgiving.

AMASS is known for our signature scents. Inspired by nature and brought to life by our Master Distiller Morgan McLachlan, each AMASS scent is meticulously crafted using a blend of natural botanicals to evoke a feeling and spark joy in your day. Explore the story behind each of our four core scents here:

FOUR THIEVES

CINNAMON · ALLSPICE · CLOVE · EUCALYPTUS

Our Four Thieves scent is inspired by a blend of botanicals once believed to prevent the spread of the plague in medieval Europe. Named after a band of thieves who used the tincture to protect themselves from disease as they robbed the dead, the Four Thieves recipe is an age-old remedy that we’ve reimagined for modern life. Cinnamon, allspice, clove, and eucalyptus create a warm, spicy aroma.

PSEUDO CITRINE

LEMON · GINGER · GRAPEFRUIT · LAVENDER

In Kyoto, reverence hangs thick in the air. Glimmering summer sun reflects onto the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, itself mirrored onto the glassy surface of the Kyōko-chi. Sheathed in gold leaf, the Temple ripples in the water under towering limonene pines. Is what we’re seeing real, or a reflection of a reflection?

Inspired by the yellow gemstone citrine, Pseudo Citrine evokes a lemon-fresh scent while offering an energizing ritual. Lemon, ginger, grapefruit, and lavender join for a light, refreshing citrus scent.

BASILISK BREATH

BASIL · PEPPERMINT · ROSEMARY · SAGE · THYME

Inspired by the Greek myth of the basilisk, a deadly serpent, our Basilisk Breath scent features sweet basil, a botanical once considered to be a protective charm against the basilisk’s fatal stare and breath. In following the long occult tradition of naming antidotes for their poison, Basilisk Breath enlivens basil’s mythological roots while delivering a bright, refreshing clean. Basil, peppermint, rosemary, sage, and thyme blend to create an invigorating herbal scent.

FOREST BATH

SPRUCE · AMBER · PETRICHOR

On the coast overlooking the Salish Sea, salt and rain entwine in the trees. In a psychosomatic forest escape, soak in the atmospheric hush through the senses. The shimmer of water hitting stone lingers on the skin, as the cool crisp of petrichor and cedar warms with the butterscotch sweetness of amber musk. Ozonic top notes spring from the shore for a boreal bath that cleanses the soul. Spruce, amber, and petrichor build a dense woodland aroma.

A bouquet of flowers for Mother’s Day is the oldest trick in the book, next to maybe breakfast in bed or a hand-drawn card. But where does the tradition stem from, and what flowers are associated with the holiday?

It all started with a woman named Anna Jarvis. Born in West Virginia in 1864, Anna would go on to found Mother’s Day in 1908, three years after her own mother’s death. It would be a few years later, in 1914, that President Woodrow Wilson would formally declare the second Sunday of May Mother’s Day (it wasn’t until 1972 that Father’s Day became a national holiday, if you’re keeping track).

What started as a way to commemorate Anna’s own mother quickly became a way to recognize mothers everywhere. In celebration of the first memorial, Anna gave the events’ attendants 500 white carnations, her mother’s favorite flower.The flower became an important symbol of the holiday, as Anna explained,

The carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart, and so, too, mothers hug their children to their hearts.

Over time, the floral industry commodified the flower, even introducing red carnations to meet growing demand. Prices went up, and Anna’s original symbolism behind the carnation faded, instead taking on a new meaning; the red carnation was gifted to mothers, while the white carnation was used to honor mothers who had recently passed, placed on their gravestones as a tribute.

It wasn’t just the symbolism that changed; aware that Mother’s Day was quickly becoming a cash cow, greeting card and confection companies quickly hopped on board as well, creating their own product lines gearing toward celebrating moms everywhere.

Anna, fed up with the the commercialization of a day founded on altruistic grounds, boldly spoke out about the trivialization of the day, at one point saying, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.”

In 1923, Anna went so far as to stop the day’s festivities by disturbing white carnation sellers, though she was shortly arrested for her public order violation. Her attempts to have the holiday formally rescinded also failed. And despite her best efforts, Anna’s unwillingness to adapt to the times led to her own economic hardship; when she died in 1948, it was the floral and greeting card companies that paid for her medical bills.

Fast forward to today, when Mother’s Day is still widely celebrated, remaining one of the biggest days of sales in the floral and greeting card industries.The most common gift? Flowers, though the carnation isn’t the only popular pick; tulips, daisies, lilies are all common choices, though your mom’s favorite flowers is always the best bet in our book.

Fascinated by flora? Read up on the history of the L.A. flower district, or dive deeper into the origins of the poinsettia.

This past year, the color green has been in. From the uptick in houseplants to the cultural phenomenon that was Dakota Johnson’s Alligator Alley-colored kitchen in her now-infamous Architectural Digest tour (IYKYK), it’s clear the verdant hue has overtaken our homes. And it makes sense: in a year where we’re glued to our screens and so much is unknown, of course we want to swath ourselves in the cool, relaxing color of nature. But why, exactly, does the color green have the power to soothe us?

Color therapy, also known as chromotherapy, is a therapeutic remedy that uses color and light to treat physical and mental health and balance the body’s chakras. If that sounds woo-woo, rest assured that the principle has been backed up by research; in one small experiment, researchers at the Aalborg University of Copenhagen monitored the brain activity of subjects and exposed them to different colors of light. Their brains were notably more active when exposed to red and blue light, while green light led to an overall feeling of ease and relaxation.

This isn’t a new phenomenon; in the early 1900s, a New York psychiatric hospital had a color ward to treat patients. There was a black room to soothe manic patients, a red room for those dealing with feelings of melancholy, a violet room for treating insanity, and then a green room for the boisterous. While we now know that purple walls are no cure for insanity, the idea that the shades of our surroundings can affect our mood still holds.

The Japanese concept of forest bathing, known as shinrin-yoku, speaks to this very premise; surrounding yourself in lush green spaces reduces stress, improves focus, and can even have positive effects on your physical well-being, from boosting your immune system to lowering heart rate and blood pressure. And yes, it can even help you from being too boisterous, if that’s a particular problem you face.

Looking to self-soothe by enveloping yourself in the color green? Paint your living room a deep emerald. Outfit your space with Monsteras galore. Or perhaps the simplest way: green-ify your bar cart with a bottle of Riverine, our non-alcoholic spirit packed with verdant botanicals like rosemary, mint, and cucumber.

Bathing has always been about much more than getting clean. The act of slowing down for a soak is synonymous with self-care, and that’s been true since humans first had the thought, what if we sat in some hot water?

The history of tub time starts in ancient India, where the daily ritual of bathing first began. In Ayurveda, the Indian system of medicine, water is a purifying force thought to cleanse not only the body, but the mind and the soul. That’s why the vedas and puranas recommend bathing not once, but three times a day, an elaborate hygiene practice that was first recorded in the Grihya Sutra, a Hindu text detailing the samskaras, or ceremonies, that guide a person’s life.

While the ritual or regular bathing was first devised in India, the bathtub itself dates back to around 1500 BCE in Crete. Alabaster bathtubs excavated in Santorini and the frequent appearance of the Greek word for bathtub in Homer’s literature suggests that bathing was not just a hygienic practice for the Greeks, but a way of life.

The same was true in ancient Rome, where a network of aqueducts was developed to supply water to all large towns. The advent of the aqueduct brought with it thermae, or Roman public baths. What was once a private affair very quickly became a public spectacle, and these cathedrals of cleansing became a place to converse, learn, and quite literally blow off some steam. Within their walls stretched lecture halls, Greek and Latin libraries, and baths at every temperature.

Public bathing quickly became a part of life in other parts of the world as well. Dating back to 1266, the earliest iterations of Japanese bathhouses were built into natural caves or stone vaults, which were heated by burning wood before seawater was poured over the rocks to create steam. The entryways to these bathhouses were made intentionally small so as to slow the escape of heat. Because of this small opening and a lack of windows, the inside of these bathhouses was pitch dark, meaning users would have to clear their throats to announce their arrival. The combination of nudity and dim lighting meant that sexual shenanigans often arose, and in time these public bathhouses would come into disrepute on moral grounds.

Morality wasn’t the only thing to bring an end to public bathing. Disease, unsurprisingly, ran rampant in these bathhouses, which without soap or other germ-killing agents became cesspools of sorts. With health concerns looming, private baths grew in popularity and became increasingly accessible to the working class. As cleanliness became more and more correlated with social standing, soap became all the rage, too.

The rise of the private bath has brought with it new bathing rituals. Complete with bath salts and bubbles, the tub has become a place to take care of yourself and indulge in some alone time. It’s a decidedly different approach to bathing than the Romans had with their amphitheatre-like bathhouses, but the principle still stands: bathing has always and will always be about much more than getting clean.

When AMASS Master Distiller Morgan McLachlan set out to design our latest spirit, Riverine, the process began with botanicals, just as it always does. Then she went rogue, ditching the alcohol in favor of something a little lighter: water vapor.

Traditional spirits, like our Gin and Vodka, undergo a distillation process in which alcohol is used to extract oils from a blend of botanicals. With our Gin, that process begins with brighter botanicals, like citrus and California bay leaf, which go into our botanical basket. Meanwhile, earthier, richer botanicals, like Reishi mushroom and juniper, are macerated in alcohol for 18 hours.

From there, we place our spirit base in the kettle of a hybrid Carl pot still, and then run a long, lower-heat distillation where alcohol vapor is passed through a rectification column to soften flavors before joining the remaining botanicals in the botanical basket.

With Riverine, we did things differently. Each of our 14 botanicals is individually distilled in a proprietary hydrosteam distillation process. There, water vapor, instead of alcohol, is used to extract essential oils for a crisp, evergreen flavor profile. The result is a spirit that captures the freshness of the Pacific Northwest, the region where Morgan first forged her passion for plants.

Without the addition of alcohol, all the flavor comes directly from plants. Vibrant botanicals like sumac, sorrel, lemon, and apple are carefully layered along with earthy juniper and parsley. What you get is a complex spirit that is devoid of the dizzying effects that come with drinking a high-proof spirit. There’s none of the harsh burn you’d get from cheap alcohol, either. Instead, it’s smooth, nuanced, herbaceous, and endlessly mixable.

Basically, we took the best of booze and brought it to a non-alcoholic bottle.

Before you dive in, put our tasting tips to good use and learn a bit about the British Columbia island that inspired our first non-alcoholic spirit.

When AMASS Co-Founder and Master Distiller Morgan McLachlan was a child, she spent summers deep in the coniferous forests and alongside the rushing rivers of Vancouver Island.

“It was like Avalon,” she describes the terrain now, alive with flora and fauna such as elk, black bears, and mountain goats.

In that picturesque stretch of land plopped in the Pacific, Morgan became enamored with plants and the unique microclimates of the region she called home.

Vancouver Island, unlike the mainland of British Columbia with its harsh winters and frequent snow, has a mild climate. It's one of the warmest areas in Canada, and Mediterranean crops like olives and lemons thrive there because of it, as do sun-loving botanicals like sumac and sorrel.

The island’s rich, plentiful natural resources are why indigineous peoples have lived there for thousands and thousands of years. The Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, and various Coast Salish peoples all still reside on the island, and their cultures are deeply entwined with the bountiful nature the region has to offer.

Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw oral history says their ancestors came in the forms of animals. Origin myths tell the tale of seagulls, grizzly bears, and orcas emerging from the sea and forest before transforming into their human form. The Coast Salish peoples, too, have their own stories of shapeshifting between animal and human spirits. This profound connection to the natural appears in their cultures in other ways, too, like fishing, which historically was central to both the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw and Nuu-chah-nulth economy.

Today, nature remains at the forefront of social, spiritual, and commercial life on Vancouver Island. The 12,407 square miles of terrain that make up the island is broken up into seven regions, each with their own unique microclimate. South Island, which sits at the southernmost point of Vancouver Island, is a commercial hub home to British Columbia’s vibrant capital, Victoria. Other regions offer more quiet respite, like North Central Island with its alpine mountains and running rivers.

The Pacific Rim, which sits on the central western coast of Vancouver Island, is home to a temperate rainforest and boasts the largest rainfall in North America. The tallest recorded Douglas firs were found in this stretch of forest, swaying in the canopy alongside dozens of other species of coniferous “big trees” like western hemlock, Sitka spruce, and yellow cedar.

It was this particular microclimate that inspired our Co-Founder Morgan to develop Forest Bath. Craving the sensory comforts of her home province, she sought to capture the essence of Vancouver Island in a bath salt blend. The crisp salt of the Pacific pairs with the soothing scent of rain drizzling on the treetops of the island’s coastal forests for an immersive soak that transports you to the Pacific Northwest’s lush landscape.

Read more about how Morgan self-soothes with a long soak here, and then take a trip to Vancouver Island from your tub.

P.S. Stay tuned for another PNW-inspired product, dropping later this month.

Aside from the Christmas tree, the poinsettia – a red and green plant belonging to the Euphorbiaceae family – is December’s star botanical. And it looks like a star too, with its pointed crimson bracts that fan out in a distinct celestial shape.

The poinsettia is rooted, like most other botanicals, in lore and legend. The story goes like this: in 16th-century Mexico, a girl by the name of Pepita was too poor to afford a gift for the yearly Christmas celebration. Inspired by an angel, she gathered weeds from the roadside and placed them in front of the church altar. Poinsettias blossomed, and from the 17th century onward the plant was prized in Mexican Christmas festivities, its star-shaped foliage said to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem and its crimson color the blood of Christ.

It took several centuries for the plant to be officially recognized as a new species, until 1834 when it was listed by German scientist Johann Friedrich Klotzsch as the “Mexican flame flower” or “painted leaf.” It wasn’t until Joel Roberts Poinsett, a botanist and the first US Minister to Mexico, began shipping the plant back from Mexico to his greenhouses in South Carolina that it earned its lasting name: the poinsettia.

Since the early 19th century when cultivation of the poinsettia first began in the US, the industry has blossomed. That’s been in large part because of the marketing efforts led by Albert Ecke. In 1900, Ecke opened a dairy and orchard in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles and began selling poinsettias from street stands. His son, Paul Ecke, developed a technique in which two varieties of poinsettias are grafted together to produce a denser, fuller plant. Things really took off when Paul Ecke Jr., the third generation of the Ecke family, led an extensive marketing campaign to promote poinsettias during the holiday season.

He sent poinsettias to television stations to display on air from Thanksgiving to Christmas, and appeared on programs like The Tonight Show and Bob Hope’s Christmas specials. These publicity efforts coupled with the Ecke’s proprietary production methods allowed the Ecke family to effectively monopolize the plant and turn it into something that looks, well, very little like a naturally-occurring poinsettia.

In the ‘80s, university researcher John Dole discovered Ecke’s unique production methods and published them, allowing competitors to stand a fighting chance and adopt the same money-making practices. Despite this leveling of the playing field, the Eckes still serve 70 percent of the domestic market and 50 percent internationally, accounting for a large portion of the some 70 million poinsettias sold in the US alone every year.

These days, poinsettia production is a $25 million industry, a staggering number for a plant that’s only sold six weeks out of the year.

Plant curiosity piqued? Learn about the history of the Los Angeles Flower District here, or get to know the bad boy of botany Nicholas Culpeper.

At the corner of Wall and 8th streets in Downtown LA sits the heart of the Los Angeles Flower District. The perennial institution has been the standard supplier of fresh-cut stems for Angelenos everywhere since the early 20th century.

Available only to those up and awake in the sunrise hours between 5am and noon, this botanical cornucopia offers every commercially available cut flower under the sun, from snapdragons to marigolds. That, coupled with the low cost of admission ($2 on weekdays, $1 on weekends) spurs everyone from earnest lovers seeking Valentine’s Day roses to Instagram influencers in pursuit of anything deemed aesthetic to flock here in droves.

Like most Los Angeles stories, the LA Flower District has a young yet rich history, one that starts –  and truthfully, ends – with immigrants seeking to bring something beautiful, human, true to this desert city by the sea.

In the early 20th century, LA-area flower farmers drove their horse-drawn wagons into DTLA every morning to sell their flowers. The scene was starkly different than what it looks like now: the blaring horns and headlights that fill the 101 replaced with dirt and dust. There was no Eastern Columbia Building gilded and glimmering in the aquamarine light, telling time. And the Flower District that is now a sprawling mecca of buds and blossoms was just a couple wagons lined up along the side of the road.

A prominent carnation grower based out of Santa Monica named James Vaweter established the first dedicated flower market in 1905. It was on Spring Street, the west side. It would take a few years for the floral business to make its way East into the derelict streets of downtown, where it would stay and flourish for the next century.

The Southern California Flower Market, organized by local Japanese-American farmers, was the first to settle there. In a few years, European immigrants would set up their own shop down the street, called the Los Angeles Flower Market. In due time, both markets would relocate to the 700 block of South Wall Street, where they would expand and modernize.

Over time and out of simple necessity, these two standalone shops that were seemingly at odds came to be part of a mosaic of florists and nurseries that called DTLA home. Through the ‘90s, dozens of smaller flower shops migrated downtown to do business near the historic Los Angeles Flower District, blooming alongside these towering cathedrals of chrysanthemums. A ragtag community quickly formed, and today more than 50 vendors make up the largest wholesale flower district in the US.

Regardless of whether you’re outfitting an entire wedding reception or simply looking for a single pink peony to sit on your kitchen counter, the Los Angeles Flower District is the kind of place special enough to set your alarm for. Carve out a few hours to aimlessly stroll through its stalls, bargaining with vendors and getting lost in the sea of blossoms. Just a PSA: don’t forget to bring cash.

Conjure up an image in your head of Rome or Paris and it will likely look something like this: impossibly chic women wearing large hats, dining al fresco at sidewalk cafes, smoking cigarettes and sipping candy-colored tipples out of shrunken glasses.

What are they drinking, you ask? Allow us to explain.

The aperitivo – a bittersweet alcoholic beverage thought to stimulate your appetite pre-dinner – is, in many countries and cultures, a way of life. Known as aperitif in French, the word comes from the Latin amperire, meaning “to open up.” And that’s exactly what these low-ABV beverages do; they warm up your taste buds and prep your digestive system for a decadent meal.

Digestivi fall in the same camp, the after-dinner counterpart to aperitivi purported to settle your stomach after an especially indulgent feast. Much of this effect comes down to alcohol. As anyone who has ever had a drunken hankering for a late night bite can tell you, alcohol stimulates the appetite, meaning when you’re full and you drink, you will begin to crave food again. 

Aperitivi and digestivi couple that power of booze with good old fashioned herbal medicine. Most spirits, whether labelled as a digestivo or otherwise, began as elixirs. Stomach-soothing botanicals like ginger and cardamom were added to drinks to aid in digestion, and tavern keepers kept up with the tradition by lacing liquor with flowers and herbs to ease any adverse effects from a stiff drink.

The prevalence of these spirits has now stretched so far that it’s seeped into European drinking culture. Entire books, like Marissa Huff’s Aperitivo: The Cocktail Culture of Italy have been dedicated to the subject, and for good reason. Peruse any given sidestreet in Milan around golden hour and you’ll see cafes lined with people gathering for the liquid precursor to dinner. Come by a little later and you’ll see a similar scene, but with plates cleaned and votives and moonlight dappling the digestivi.

And that’s not even getting started on the sheer amount of varieties that abound in the dizzying world of aperitivi. There are the brands you know and love, like Aperol, Campari, and Lillet. These are the classic bottles that make their way into your summer spritzes and winter negronis, adding a delightful dose of something bitter, something sweet. And then there are others, like Fernet and Port, best taken neat as a post-meal potation.

The process of picking your poison, so to speak, is one that should not be rushed. It’s a deeply personal choice, and we’re not here to complicate matters by offering our opinions. So instead we’ll just sit here, sipping our AMASS negroni in peace. Cin cin.

At AMASS, we have a bit of a preoccupation with the occult. After all, our Chief Product Officer and Master Distiller is a practicing witch with a penchant for herbal remedies. So, when we heard about the Progressive Era witchy weirdos that were hanging around Portland in the 19th century, we needed to know more.

There are certain characters that the history books forget, women whose stories are buried under centuries and centuries of men in suits. Lucy Rose Mallory was one of those women.

Born in 1843, Lucy Rose Mallory was a psychic, a suffragist, a vegetarian, a devotee of metaphysical experiences – the kind of woman Portland Monthly once called “an internationally respected good vibes factory.” She was, in a word, an icon, and was born in Michigan before moving west with her father into the unbroken wilderness of mid-19th century Oregon. The Roses settled in a city in the Umpqua River Valley that would later be named Roseburg in honor of them.

As an adult, Lucy was probably known best as the wife of Oregon congressman Rufus Mallory. But her work – as a writer and editor, namely – has endured. For 30 years, she ran two periodicals printed under one cover – The World’s Advanced Thought and the Universal Republic. She wrote passionately on a myriad of topics: a small spider she had befriended, the power of collective positive thinking, her experience with astral projection as a child. Of the spider, Lucy wrote upon feeding it a dead fly,

 

“It soon became very friendly, and it would eat from my hand, and run all over my head and face, and it appeared to love me.” Life, it seemed, Lucy experienced as one big out-of-body experience.

Leo Tolstoy was such an ardent admirer of Lucy’s monthly magazine that he swiftly declared her the “greatest woman in America.” This was not an unpopular opinion. Across Portland, Lucy attracted the attention of advanced thinkers and workers, who were devoted readers of her magazine and attendees of her twice-weekly parlor meetings in which she led séances. What Lucy spoke became gospel, her musings on New Thought – the simple belief of mind over matter – championed by her league of loyal followers. She was the psychic friend to the city’s social elite, and the first to establish and maintain a free reading room in the city. For 30 years, she opened its doors to anyone and everyone who wanted to enjoy the rare books on spiritualism and philosophy that lined its shelves.

Her commitment to her community did not stop there. Back in 1874, the old slavery prejudice ran so strong in Oregon that 45 Black children were forbidden from attending the Salem public schools, as no white teachers would teach them. Lucy volunteered to instruct them for the three years it took for the opposition to end and for the children to be admitted into the public school system. The money she made sat in the bank, as she had no use for it.

In her free time, Lucy sat on the boards of associations and clubs like the Oregon Vegetarian Society and the Association of Artists and Authors. She was, perhaps most importantly, a lifelong member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and fought for the right to vote just as she fought for the right to education. She died in September of 1920, just one week after the ratification of the 19th amendment and two months before eight million women would rush to the polls for the very first time.

100 years later, the story of Lucy Rose Mallory, an otherwise forgotten figure, is important to remember and retell. She  was a woman of the people, an active advocate and celebrated psychic, a friend to both Tolstoy and spiders. If there’s a moral to her story, it’s this: be more like Lucy (and don’t forget to cast your vote tomorrow).

Traditional rules of etiquette have, for the most part, been retired. It’s difficult to imagine anyone other than my grandmother caring which fork I use, how I fold a napkin, whether or not I excuse myself from the table after dinner. But when it comes to drinking, there are certain rites and rituals that never faded out of style. Raise a glass. Share a toast. Clink. Maintain eye contact. Say cheers, and do it with feeling.

These are the things we do and have done for centuries, millenia, forever. But why? What is their cultural significance?

While the ritual of clinking glasses has evolved to become a means of connection among friends, it started, like most things do, as an act of self-preservation. The custom of touching glasses arose from concerns about poisoning, as clinking coupes and steins together jubilantly would cause each drink to slosh and spill over into the others’. Over time, as fears of contaminated cocktails waned, the ritual took on a new meaning.

According to the International Handbook of Alcohol and Culture, toasting “is probably a secular vestige of ancient sacrificial libations in which a sacred liquid was offered to the gods: blood or wine in exchange for a wish, a prayer summarized in the words 'long life!' or 'to your health!'"

So the next time you’re at a wedding and some drunken groomsmen stumbles up to the microphone to toast to the bride and groom, think of it this way: it’s not about how your cousin Steve was a total legend in college as much as it is a sacrificial libation to the gods.

Saying “cheers,” similarly, holds a deeper meaning. The phrase originates from the old French word chiere meaning “face” or “head.” By the 18th century, it was used as a way to express happiness and encouragement. Today, the phrase is entirely symbolic, a practice of camaraderie that is so routine it’s almost second nature. As the round of drinks hits the table, it’s expected before taking your first sip that you raise your glass, lock eyes, and clink clink clink.

It’s a tradition that transcends language and culture. Salute in Italian, skol in Danish, sante in French, cheers in English all mean roughly the same thing: I’m happy to be here, in this moment, with you. And even when our meeting places are digitized and we can’t share a drink IRL, these small acts of communion remain.

Cheers to that.

Freshly squeezed Florida oranges. A cedar closet. Gasoline. The whiff of your grandmother’s perfume, musked with age. Sweat mixed with cut grass. Sauce on the stove. Leather. The candy sweetness of waffle cones in an ice cream shop. A scent you can’t place but can feel coursing through you like a lightning bolt of recognition. A summer storm.

Smell – the good, the bad, the cloying, the intoxicating – is intrinsically linked to memory. It’s a romantic notion with scientific implications, as the reason we hold on so tightly to scent-fueled moments is simply because of our brain’s anatomy.

Scent starts out simple. Odor molecules travel up and through the nostrils, binding to receptors in the nose and transmitting a signal through the olfactory system. From here, things get more complicated. The main olfactory bulb transmits pulses to both mitral and tufted cells, which help determine odor concentration based on the time certain neuron clusters fire. These cells work hard to differentiate between similar scents, such as a lemon versus a grapefruit, and hold onto that data for future recognition. The amygdala, a part of the limbic system responsible for processing memory and emotion, also processes pheromone and allomone signals. These include everything from bodily excretions (sexy) to the smell of flowers.

So when I say smell is tied to memory, I’m not being corny; it’s a cold hard fact, backed and approved by cold hard science. And our olfactory impressions begin early.

In the womb, smell is the only fully developed sense a fetus has. In fact, it continues to be the most developed sense in a child until the tender age of 10, when sight takes over. It’s the reason so many of our childhood memories are linked to scent.

Even as the vision of my grandmother fades, I can still vividly remember the soap she used, how her clothes always smelled like mothballs, the way fresh garden basil seemed to linger in her kitchen.

Taste, similarly, takes on a heightened nostalgia. If you’ve ever been instructed to pinch your nose when glugging down a dose of cough syrup, you know that without smell, taste is a rather empty sense. When you eat, food molecules make their way back to the nasal epithelium, meaning the majority of spices and flavors we savor are actually being processed through our sense of smell, not taste. Is there any wonder why then, for so many of us, our sense of home is so tightly tied to the foods we ate and the scents we smelled?

Because smell is processed by the amygdala, smell and emotion are stored as one memory. A positive association with the smell of gasoline as a child translates into a lifelong love of the scent. A close encounter with a bonfire means you likely won’t be keen to smoky scents later in life.

Proustian memory, a concept that comes from Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, speaks to this very phenomenon – with just a quick whiff or taste, we can instantaneously be transported back to another moment in time. It’s a powerful kind of time travel, and one that unwittingly guides our days.

A stranger’s cologne on a too-crowded subway car, sharp with vetiver and pine, can make us yearn for a grandfatherly kind of love. Thick steam swirling out of a Taiwanese restaurant can transport you to childhood days spent dawdling around while your dad worked the line, the hot spatter of fryer oil perfuming his clothes. Far less pleasant smells – menthol cigarettes, New York sewers, the chemical clean of pool chlorine – can have a similarly transformative effect.

This superpower is one we can wield intentionally, too.

When I was a kid, my mom applied lotion to my back every night. In dim purple light, she would put a dollop on my spine, the cold cream at once startling and then like home. It smelled like lavender, vanilla, her. And so now, on nights when I can’t sleep, I reach for the bottle. It lives on my nightstand, for ease in time travel. I can’t reach my own back, so instead I rub it in slow circles at the base of my neck until my stress has melted entirely and I am 10 years old again, sitting at the foot end of my mother’s bed.

That’s the power scent has; to transcend space and time and land us in a moment that feels like an embrace. It’s perhaps the simplest, most time-effective way to make our day-to-day lives feel a little more beautiful, our in-between moments a little more sacred. A ritual, if you will.

And the best part? It’s only a spray away.

Since the advent of alcohol, imbibing has gone hand-in-hand with unwinding. We mark the end of a day with a twist of a cap, the pour of a drink, the clink of ice in a glass. Happy hour, in particular, has become a designated time for us to meet up with friends and colleagues over drinks and half-priced appetizers and forget about the meetings, the deadlines, the banality of the workday. It wasn’t always like that though.

The term “happy hour” comes from American Naval slang dating back to World War I. In its conception, it referred to an allotted time on the ship when sailors could let loose, so to speak, competing in boxing matches and other foolhardy pursuits. Alcohol was not yet intrinsically linked to happy hour–the term instead referred, quite literally, to the one hour a day sailors got to kick back and make happy.

During Prohibition, the phrase was picked up to describe the underground speakeasy gatherings that often took place. Opinions differ on how the term became introduced into mainstream vernacular–some say it was a Saturday Evening Post article from 1959 that mentioned happy hour in regards to military life, while others cite a 1961 Providence Journal article referencing Newport policemen “deprived of their happy hour at the cocktail bar.” Regardless of how the expression rose in popularity, it was quickly co-opted by the service industry in the ’70s and ’80s as a way to draw in customers before the daily dinner rush.

The idea stuck, and now nearly 50 years later you can stroll into any chain restaurant on a Wednesday and order a $1 Mai Tai, so long as you show up before 6 pm. It’s a uniquely American sensation, the notion of getting drunker for less. But happy hour, despite its popularity among deal-loving Westerners, is not a universal phenomenon. In some places, offering discounted drinks is even prohibited by law.

“Colleagues are drinking as a means to understand and connect with each other. They’re searching for a deeper truth that is harder to come by within the confines of a cubicle, and the ritual of after-work nomikai gives them the time and space to do that.”

Imbibing in a post-work drink is not just about snagging a deal, though. In Japan, drinking is deeply ingrained in corporate culture, a way of breaking down barriers between bosses and employees outside of the daily 9 to 5. Nomikai, which loosely translates in English to “gathering to drink,” is a recreational aspect of work, but to say it is entirely optional would be to write off the intense pressures present in many Japanese workplaces. This attitude is slowly changing, thanks in large part to a drunk driving law that was stiffened in Japan in 2007 to prohibit driving with a blood-alcohol level above 0%. The advent of non-alcoholic beer and spirits shortly followed. But the desire to indulge in a post-work drink speaks to a larger social yearning that doesn’t seem to be fading, even as non-alcoholic options replace the standard boozy fare.

The term nommunication, a combination of the Japanese word nomu, meaning drink, and the English word communication, describes the phenomenon best–colleagues are drinking as a means to understand and connect with each other. They’re searching for a deeper truth that is harder to come by within the confines of a cubicle, and the ritual of after-work nomikai gives them the time and space to do that.

Drinking after work is not narrowly defined by a trip to the bar, however. At-home cocktail culture has been on the rise for quite some time now, with stylized bar carts becoming a fixture in living and dining rooms across the world. The uptick of craft distilleries and breweries has ignited a passion for drinking–and drinking well. It’s not just “cracking open a cold one” after a long day at the office–consumers are sipping natural wines, shaking up premium cocktails, and enjoying low-alc and even non-alcoholic spirits and aperitifs at the end of the workday.

For many, the intent to get drunk has escaped the equation and instead has been replaced with a desire to slow down and delight in the pleasure of drinking. At the end of the day, people crave that ritual, whether as a means to human connection or simply to feel connected to themselves. And despite a rather storied and sometimes complicated past, the tradition of the post-work drink is rooted in that connection.