Ep 5 – Nicola Hart: Founder, foodie, and fascinated with fermentation

Welcome back to Cheers with Nat – the podcast dedicated to cheering on women in drinks.

Today’s guest is Nicola Hart, founder of Agua de Madre.

Nicola starts by telling us all about Agua de Madre’s signature product – water kefir – including what it is, where she first discovered it, and what led her to start making it herself.

From there, we discuss how the business has evolved over the years, why Nicola traded a career in film-making for one in fermentation (and the unexpected parallels between the two), what keeps her grounded outside of work, and lots more.

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What stuck with me from this conversation:

• On functional drinks: “Everybody’s understanding now, people are drinking less or rather they’re just wanting to add value to their water. I mean, in the past, I would only ever drink water. I didn’t ‘get’ fizzy drinks – until now.”

• On film-making vs building a drinks brand: “All those skills you get – from organisation, making things happen, you’ve got a budget. In fact, I’d say that probably working in the drinks world is much tougher. Because in film production, you might have a 10-week production time when it’s 24/7, but then you have the downtime before that when you’re working with the script and raising the money, and then you have the downtime after when you’re editing. Getting a drink to market is absolutely non-stop. It’s intense.”

• On learning new skills and building a team: “It’s about age and experience and listening and knowing that you don’t know everything. That kind of helps… But also trusting your gut, as well. Trust your gut is pretty much one of our lines. ‘Get a good gut feeling’ is what it’s about. And more and more that comes back.”

• On advice for other founders: “Just start. Just do the first step. Obviously, you learn on the way… Actually it’s just starting and having passion, commitment, and knowing that it’s going to be a long haul – it’s not going to be a sprint – and to stick with it.”

• On what keeps her in the drinks industry: “Well, its compelling, isn’t it? It’s compelling to see the business grow. Especially now it seems to be. I’m enjoying the adventure. I’m enjoying the ride and, boy, what a ride.”

 

Links & things:

• Agua de Madre

  • Product range

    • We were tasting the blood orange water kefir

  • Home Madre film competition (scroll down)

• Early inspiration & stockists

  • Doug McMaster’s Silo (now closed)

  • Sam & Sam Clark’s Moro

• Nicola’s latest film project

  • Firebrand (2023)

  • Based on the book Firebrand by Elizabeth Fremantle

• Local restaurants getting some love

  • Jolene (makers of my fave cinnamon roll in London!)

  • Primeur

  • Westerns Laundry

• The Fermenters Guild

• Madres on the dance floor with Sophie Ellis Bextor

• Nicola’s podcast reccs:

  • Hungry (getting its second shout out on the show!)

  • People Doing Things with Ed Little

  • BBC’s The Food Programme – ‘The Science of Fermentation’ episode

• Nicola’s book reccs:

  • Tim Spector’s Ferment

    • Check out Tim & Nicola’s Instagram Live here

  • The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz

  • Which Wine When by Claire Strickett & Bert Blaize

  • Culpability by Bruce Holsinger

 

Recording info:

• January 2026 in London

• Apologies for the typing noises at certain points, Nicola’s colleague Yasmin was diligently taking notes during our recording!

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