Soursop, West Africa's forgotten fruit

Beneath its spiky skin and fragrant white flesh, soursop carries a taste many West Africans associate with childhood — yet very few spirits brands have thought to bring it to life. That's where WAKIZA SHURI begins.

Soursop grows almost everywhere in Benin, often right in people's yards, without anyone paying it much attention. It's eaten fresh, turned into juice, sometimes jam. Rarely, however, is it turned into a spirit.

A demanding fruit, a singular taste

Soursop is not an easy fruit to work with. Its fibrous texture, its acidity that shifts with ripeness, its delicate aroma that's easily lost in processing make it a demanding ingredient. That's exactly what made the challenge interesting: creating a liqueur that preserves the fruit's freshness and personality, without drowning it in excess sugar or alcohol.

WAKIZA SHURI is the result of that work. A smooth liqueur, with a fruity, slightly tangy nose, designed to be enjoyed neat, on ice, or in cocktails — where it brings a tropical freshness that's hard to achieve with more classic ingredients.

Valuing what has always been in plain sight

There's something symbolic about building a premium spirits brand around such a familiar, commercially undervalued fruit. That is exactly WINEX's approach: not searching for a rare or imported ingredient to justify a premium position, but revealing the value of what West Africa already has in abundance.

Soursop illustrates this conviction well. An everyday fruit, transformed with rigor, can become a reference found equally on a family table in Cotonou and on a bar menu in Abidjan.

SHURI, a name that carries this story

The name SHURI was chosen to carry this identity: a liqueur that doesn't seek to impress through exoticism, but through faithfulness to a taste many will instantly recognize — that of a fruit they ate as a child, elevated to be rediscovered as an adult.