Confluence Kombucha founder and owner William Esslinger is bringing home three top honors from the World Kombucha Awards 2025 in Barcelona.
Confluence Kombucha was among companies from 39 countries that offered 360 entries during the competition in late October. “It’s cool to have a worldwide competition to showcase this up-and-coming beverage,” says Esslinger, who started bottling his kombuchas a year ago after a decade in business. “It was my first year competing, and I didn’t expect to win.”
Find the best food in St. Louis
Subscribe to the St. Louis Dining In and Dining Out newsletters to stay up-to-date on the local restaurant and culinary scene.
The Awards
The World Kombucha Awards “Taste” category measures the beverage’s quality characteristics in terms of appearance, aroma, body, taste, and aftertaste.
In the Signature Kombucha subcategory, Confluence earned gold for its pineapple-palo santo kombucha. The flavor combines fruity notes from pineapple with the coconut-like aroma of palo santo—a fragrant tree wood often used as incense—resulting in a tropical drink reminiscent of a piña colada. Farigola from Silvestra in Spain received silver, and Shiso and Sichuan Spark from Matisse in the Kitchen in Taiwan received bronze.
In the Jun (honey-fermented) subcategory, Confluence was awarded gold for its jun-holy basil kombucha. Jun is noteworthy because it uses a base of green tea rather than the typical kombucha base of black tea—and Confluence may have had an advantage in this category because all of its kombuchas are made with green tea. Because jun uses honey instead of cane sugar, it ferments more quickly, giving it a lighter taste and fizzier mouthfeel. Wonderbrew of Malaysia received silver for its raspberry-lemon jun and bronze for its pink guava jun.
In the subcategory Fruit(s) with Spices, Confluence took silver with its uniquely Midwestern pawpaw and rum barrel kombucha. Yala Kombucha from the United Arab Emirates won gold for its yuzu and chili blend, and Pontoeko of Brazil won bronze for its kombucha with abacaxi (a type of pineapple whose name means “fragrant fruit”).
“The competition almost doubled in submissions from last year,” Esslinger says. “That speaks to what’s happening in the industry.” The next round will be held in 2027. Esslinger says it will likely be in Barcelona again because the organizers live in that region of Spain. In fact, after the competition, he was among the competitors invited by the director of the Kombucha Brewers International to visit her brewing facility outside Barcelona.
After touring the innovative operation at Silvestra, which Confluence beat in the Signature Kombucha category, Esslinger says the visitors ended up in a walk-in cooler where leftover samples from the competition were being stored. “The very last thing I got to do was taste—and pilfer—some of the samples,” he says.
The Company
Confluence Kombucha’s fermentory is located in The Fox Den (2501 S. Jefferson) in South City. It features eight of Esslinger’s creative flavor combinations on tap, all fermented in glass using fresh and foraged ingredients.
Customers can enjoy the kombucha by the glass or in a flight on-site, or they can take it home in their own bottles or in the company’s 16-, 32-, or 64-ounce bottles. Keep an eye out for samples of treats that Esslinger makes using the SCOBYs (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) from the kombucha fermentation process.
Confluence’s kombuchas—including its flagship flavors of ginger-lavender, watermelon-blue spirulina, aronia berry, and the award-winning pineapple-palo santo—are also available at retail outlets and restaurants across St. Louis.
Each batch typically takes up to four weeks to produce—a length of time determined by Esslinger’s own taste-testing. Confluence produces hundreds of gallons of kombucha per week, some familiar, some experimental. “I made three new flavors this week,” he says. “I like to have a little mystery in the flavors that I create.”
At the competition, Esslinger found it exciting and validating to discover that some of his new ideas are very much in line with what’s happening globally. For example, he recently brewed kombucha using cypress tea and was able to compare notes with brewers from Slovenia who brought a kombucha they had made with cedar and spruce chips. “It was cool to get that nerd connection right away,” Esslinger says.
The Future
The Fox Park location, where Confluence relocated in 2023, still offers room for Esslinger to grow. His focus for 2026 will be on increasing mass production and bottling. The collegial community in Barcelona gave him plenty of tips, guidance, and inspiration. The competition also exposed him to an even larger diversity of ingredients and flavor profiles, from sweet to dry to “full-strength super acidic,” he says. “There’s a spot for everybody to find a kombucha they like.”
Esslinger adds: “In Missouri, kombucha is the most interesting beverage to be working with in this moment.” Market trends away from alcohol favor a flavorful drink that’s somewhere between brewing and distilling and shares many techniques and ingredients with both.
He also plans to focus on enhancing kombucha’s functionality—adding ingredients with medicinal properties such as Lion’s Mane mushrooms—and on bringing back combinations that have done well in the past, including a rose-honeysuckle-vanilla flavor, which he describes as “a floral cream soda.”
Esslinger chose the name Confluence based on St. Louis geography, but he says it has come to represent a larger vision, one that the World Kombucha Awards intensified. “As an artist and a food person inspired by world cuisines, the name has gathered more depth because it evokes something,” he says. “There’s a power in the idea of waterways merging, and we’re trying to uphold that every day in what we do.”
To congratulate the Confluence team on its awards and taste what the company has on tap (and maybe play a round of ping-pong on the table in its taproom), visit the fermentory from 11 a.m.–7 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Confluence Kombucha is also a regular vendor at the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market.
