Urban legend has it that picking California poppies, the official state flower, is illegal. That made it all the more tempting for Greenbar Distillery founders Melkon Khosrovian and Litty Mathew to do just that on their routine hikes in the local mountains of Southern California. Well, mostly for Melkon, who regularly picks and eats everything he finds in nature before Litty swats them out of his hands for fear of death by poisoning.

On one fateful spring day in 2009, they learned that not only is picking California poppies legal, but the entire plant is edible. They promptly hiked the hills of Griffith Park, LA’s largest park, to find and finally taste this beautiful flower. The flowers were mildly sweet and floral, like light honey; the stems like bitter cucumbers and untamed salad greens; and the roots earthy and warm, with intense bitterness. 

That moment inspired the couple to create a spirit to let the world taste California’s golden poppies any time of year but especially in cocktails. Litty and Melkon hoped to share that moment and overall feel of Los Angeles in the early spring with cocktail lovers everywhere.

With California poppies in hand, they gathered other local plants along the way, like California bay leaves, bearberries, dandelions, pink peppercorn, blessed thistle, geranium, and combined them with the aromatic citrus California grows for the whole of the U.S., lemons, oranges and grapefruit, to create Grand Poppy, a bittersweet liqueur known as amaro.

After four years of experimenting, they had created one of the most unique amari in the world, one that captured the taste of California in the springtime and provided a cocktail ingredient both approachable in its floral, citrusy aroma and wonderfully useful in simplifying complex cocktails with its layered flavors.