BG Reynolds Syrups
The Portland, Oregon syrup producer that anchors the modern exotic-cocktail revival’s ingredient supply. Founded by Blair Reynolds (who also founded Hale Pele); makes the falernum, orgeat, passion fruit, and grenadine that serious home bartenders order online when they can’t find local equivalents.
The modern exotic-cocktail revival’s ingredient supplier.
BG Reynolds Syrups was founded by Blair Reynolds, the same Portland bartender who later opened Hale Pele. The company started in the late 2000s as a small-batch syrup operation, born from Blair’s frustration at the lack of serious commercial options for the exotic-cocktail ingredients he needed behind the bar. Bottled falernum was thin and over-sweetened; commercial orgeat was almond-flavored sugar water; passion fruit syrup was mostly artificial. Blair started making his own, then started bottling them for friends and other bars, then started selling them.
By the mid-2010s, BG Reynolds had become the de facto standard for serious exotic-cocktail syrup ingredients in the United States. The company is small—a single production facility in Portland, a handful of employees—but its products show up behind the bar at Smuggler’s Cove, Latitude 29, Three Dots and a Dash, Hale Pele itself, and dozens of other revival-era exotic-cocktail bars across the country. For the home bartender ordering ingredients online, BG Reynolds is the workhorse first call.
The products
The core lineup:
- Don’s Spices #2 (Falernum) A homemade-style falernum, spicier and more aggressive than Velvet Falernum. Some serious bartenders prefer it for canonical Donn Beach builds where a stronger spice profile cuts through the rum.
- Orgeat A real almond-and-orange-flower-water orgeat, the way it’s supposed to taste. The best widely available commercial option short of making your own.
- Passion Fruit Syrup A serious passion fruit syrup with real fruit content—not the corn-syrup-and-yellow-dye product sold under similar names.
- Vanilla Syrup, Cinnamon Syrup, Ginger Syrup, Hibiscus Syrup, Pineapple Syrup, Hibiscus Grenadine A broader lineup of supporting syrups that cover most exotic-cocktail recipe needs.
- Grenadine A real pomegranate-based grenadine, not the corn-syrup imitation.
Role in the revival
BG Reynolds is the ingredient-supply equivalent of what Hamilton Rum is for rum or what Smith & Cross is for the funky Jamaican rum category. It’s the small-scale producer whose products serious bartenders specifically request, and whose existence makes the modern revival workable at home-bar scale. Without BG Reynolds (or its handful of competitors—Liber & Co., Small Hand Foods, Pratt Standard), the home bartender wanting to make a serious Mai Tai would have to make every syrup from scratch.
Blair Reynolds’s connection to Hale Pele closes the loop: the syrup company supplies the bar, and the bar’s success demonstrates what the syrups can do. The bar-and-supplier integration is unusual; most syrup companies don’t run their own bars and most bars don’t run their own syrup companies.
To go deeper
- Website bgreynolds.com. Direct online ordering. Ships nationwide in the U.S.
- Bar Hale Pele in Portland, Oregon. The bar uses BG Reynolds products throughout; tasting their cocktails is the best way to understand the syrups.
- Related Vernacular entries Falernum, Orgeat, Grenadine.