A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, but cocktails at posh Dubai bars wouldn’t be as stellar without glacier ice from Greenland. Raising both the bar of mixology and eyebrows is the news that a Greenland startup, Arctic Ice, is shipping 100,000-year-old ice from Arctic glaciers to exclusive bars in the city. As confusing and seemingly unnecessary as it may sound, in their defense, the glacier ice has been compressed over thousands of years and melts more slowly than regular ice.
This makes it the perfect companion for expensive cocktails at top-notch bars, where the drinks are not diluted and the spirits remain high, resulting in a much more luxurious experience. The company promotes its product as ‘the purest ice in the world, exquisitely sourced from the pristine glaciers of Greenland.’ Arctic Ice is sourced directly from natural glaciers in the Arctic, which have been in a frozen state for more than 100,000 years, it claims. ‘These parts of the ice sheets have not been in contact with any soils or contaminated by pollutants produced by human activities. This makes Arctic Ice the cleanest H2O on Earth.’
Arctic Ice’s co-founder, Malik V Rasmussen, is the proud founder of a new source of revenue for Greenland. ‘In Greenland, we make all our money from fish and from tourism,’ Rasmussen told the Guardian. ‘For a long time, I have wanted to find something else that we can profit from.’ The entrepreneur states his ice is environmentally friendly and of social value. It is extracted from the ample fjords around Greenland using a specialized boat with a crane attached. The ice is then stored in a blue plastic crate until the boat is full.
A refrigerated shipping container transports it to Denmark via the Icelandic shipping company Eimskip, and then it is loaded onto another ship that takes it to Dubai. Dubai’s local distributor, Natural Ice, sells this posh and globe-trotting piece of ice.
All of this work is to ensure the drink doesn’t dilute. A simpler solution would be to stop holding the drink, use whiskey stones, or make do with regular ice. Especially with scientists claiming that Earth could lose up to 80 percent of its glaciers by 2100 due to climate change, it might be better to leave the glaciers to freeze instead of downsizing them for our drinks. The numbers are already out there, according to NASA, Greenland is losing 270 billion tons of ice mass every year. The company has faced criticism for commodifying a natural resource and received negative feedback.
Well, if people can sell bottled air from the Mount Everest for $455,700, fresh bottled coastal air for $100 or UK air in bottles for $30, then the Greenlander can sell ice to those who want it.
