How smooth operators reclaimed 'moonshine' palm spirit

Since the pandemic, Lola Pedro has been spending a lot of time at an eco-tourist hamlet in Badagry town, on the outskirts of Lagos, surrounded by coconut and African apple trees next to chalets with showers open to the sky.

- Eromo Egbejule

The hamlet's beach house serves as operations base and brainstorming centre for "Nigeria's first premium spirit", as the 42-year-old researcher, who was raised in London, describes the brand she co-founded in 2018.

"I found a level of affinity with the ethos of the space-a farm-to-table eco resort," she said. Inside the facility are maturation tanks and a giant neon logo for Pedro's Premium Ògógóró, which owes half its name to a Nigerian nickname for distilled palm sap, a west African favourite until its colonial-era ostracisation a century ago.

For centuries, the palm tree has been integral to communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Palm wine, its sap, has cultural, economic and spiritual significance across west Africa.

The distilled version was once a phenomenon, said historian Ed Keazor, who drank it as an undergraduate in eastern Nigeria in the 1980s.