Atom Sour: A Cocktail Made from Chornobyl Apples and Mugwort

A new cocktail, Atom Sour, has been created in Ukraine using Chornobyl apples and mugwort.

At its heart is CHORNOBYL RAY, a distilled apple spirit made from the 2022 harvest of apples grown in liberated orchards of the Chornobyl Zone, which was occupied by russian forces and later returned to Ukrainian control.

The spirit is radiologically safe for consumption in accordance with the hygiene standards of Ukraine’s Ministry of Health. This has been confirmed through laboratory testing and an expert assessment by the State Institution “National Research Center for Radiation Medicine” of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine. According to the laboratory report, no radionuclides were detected in the product; their concentration was below the sensitivity threshold of the measurement method.

As a result, CHORNOBYL RAY stands as proof of the resilience of Ukraine’s land and its ability to recover time and again from moscow’s radioactive consequences.

The first recovery came after 1986, when the fourth reactor of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant was destroyed. The disaster was a product of the Soviet system itself – a system in which a fundamentally unsafe reactor could remain in operation, while the plant’s own operators were never informed about its undocumented design characteristics.

The second time was in 2022, when russian forces occupied the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and once again increased radiation levels in an area that had been recovering for decades after the 1986 disaster. Yet Ukrainian nature revived once again. The apple trees blossomed and bore fruit. It is from these liberated apples that CHORNOBYL RAY was created – the base of the Atom Sour cocktail.

The second key ingredient of the cocktail is mugwort, the plant from which the name “Chornobyl” itself originates.
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is a species of wormwood that has grown across the Ukrainian Polissia region for thousands of years. Its Ukrainian name – “chornobylnyk” – comes from its dark, almost black stem “chorne bylo” – literally “black stalk.”

The town of Chornobyl was named after this plant. Decades later, in the 1970s, a nuclear power plant was constructed 18 kilometres from the town and inherited its name.

Atom Sour offers a distinctive flavour profile while telling this story through de-occupied apples, mugwort and the enduring resilience of Ukrainian land that keeps healing despite everything.

Authors of the cocktail: Valentyna Novak, General Manager of Dim 10 Restaurant, and Viacheslav Arkhypenko, Senior Bartender.

Atom Sour can be enjoyed in Kyiv’s historic Podil district at Dim 10 Restaurant, 10 Spaska Street, Ukraine

How to find: dim10.com.ua/en