A million fruit bats can't be wrong about Mango Rico

THE recipe for the top-sell ing north

Queensland liqueur Mango Rico was near ly lost to the world because it was so good, according to the drink’s maker.

The hiccup in the mango liqueur’s development lay in the sampling process.

Every time Richard ‘Rico’ Robertson mixed the perfect batch he would invite some mates around and they would then ‘sample’ so much of it, the magic formu lae would be forgotten.

About three years ago, Robertson remembered to commit the mango liqueur recipe to paper before the evening got messy and Mango Rico came into being.

A year after the December 1997 launch of the drink under the mango tree in his

Townsville backyard, Robertson had bot tled 2,500 cases and was exporting to Ger many, Hong Kong and Papua New guinea.

This year, the second full year of pro duction, twice that is expected to be pro duced and Robertson is busy developing joint-venture export links to Asia, the United States and western Europe.

“The interest is extraordinary,” he said.

“Every two weeks we get a new opera tor requesting information and when the orders come through, they’re for several hundred carton loads.”

Ansett now serves Mango Rico as its signature drink in business class flights from Townsville and the Sheraton hotel

chain has developed a range of

mango cocktails using the local liqueur.

By Christmas time, Robertson plans to launch a pre-mixed alcoholic mango drink, a cookbook of Mango Rico recipes and a rock song and video clip based on the liqueur.

In his company boardroom on the back verandah, Robertson has hatched plans to build a machine to extract oil from mango seeds and engage pathologists to investi gate any pharmaceutical or cosmetic uses.

The secret to Mango Rico’s success was simple, according to the smooth-talk ing former winemaker - a million fruit bats

From page 47

From page 47 can’t be wrong. And in a town where just about everyone has a mango tree in the backyard, it seems obvious that a former South Australian vintner would come up with an alcoholic concoction made from mangoes.

Robertson had decided on a career change when he moved to Townsville in 1987, but the lack of a locally-made alco holic drink in north Queensland kept him awake at night.

Finally, he began experimenting with mangoes, using the skins of the golden fruit to produce an aromatic alcohol.

From the experimentation. Mango Rico evolved with the help of the afore mentioned taste-testing friends - and a panel of psychologists employed to inter pret the drinking public's reaction to the drink.

The final product was a clear, deli ciously mango-scented, sweet liqueur with 20 per cent alcohol by volume. Pack aged in an elegant tall bottle. Mango Rico retails for about AUDS2S. AAP ■