Louise Benkjær Limbach

Louise Benkjær Limbach is from Copenhagen, the city where København Kombucha, which she founded, began. Her culinary reference points lie outside Denmark: accounts of her background place her roots in French and Austrian gastronomy, and she drew on the food cultures of France and Austria when founding the company.^[1],[2]

Her route into fermentation was self-directed and gradual. She took fermentation classes and experimented extensively with different techniques before kombucha became her main focus, learning the craft with resources from Aarstiderne and the Noma fermentation book. København Kombucha dates the original impulse to 2011, the year Limbach's son Felix was born, and says she was employed at Novozymes during the several years she spent developing the skills to make an alcohol-free kombucha.^[3]

Limbach is a founder of København Kombucha, the Copenhagen fermented-tea house she established in 2019 alongside Nicolas Limbach. Her hobby fermenting grew into the business, and the house scoby is nurtured and passed from batch to batch, linking every bottle back to her original experiments.

Her defining format decision was to present sparkling kombucha in champagne bottles, positioned as a sustainable alcohol-free alternative to classic champagne.^[4]

Limbach met the Michelin-starred chef Francis Cardenau, who invited her to use his kitchen to produce kombucha.^[5]