ELOREA Fragrances Come to Life Through Scent-Driven Café Creations by Lee Calabia
What happens when fragrance and flavor begin to speak the same language? For ELOREA, the Korean American fragrance house known for bridging tradition and modernity, the answer is The Timeless Legacy — a new scent collection that embodies the resilience and beauty of Korea’s heritage through the olfactive expression of cultural fashion, architecture, customs, and culinary traditions. To bring this multi-sensory experience to life, ELOREA partnered with Los Angeles–based beverage artist Lee Calabia to debut four new drinks inspired by the collection’s signature fragrances.
Each zero-proof cocktail is crafted with intention, translating scent into flavor through unexpected ingredients, layered textures, and emotional storytelling. Drawing from his background in tea culture and bartending, Calabia brings both technical precision and creative freedom to the menu. We sat down with him to talk about his process, how scent can influence taste, and why your next favorite drink might just come with a spritz of nostalgia.
Let’s start at the beginning. Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be involved with ELOREA?
I started off as any barista does. I had my hands in boba, specialty coffee, and tea. One job in particular that I had before ELOREA was called Steep LA. It was a Chinese modern tea room in which I learned all about Chinese tea ceremonies (gong fu cha) during the day and a tea cocktail bar at night. I was their food runner, helped them with their tea program, and taught about tea and tea culture.
This was really my introduction into the world of flavors and I knew I had already had a passion for all things food and beverage for a long time prior to Steep. Unfortunately, I was let go and it gave me a lot of time to learn and experiment with drinks.
This sparked my small business, AKO. We served Chinese and Japanese tea with a bit of a modern twist. I wanted to create a platform in which I can showcase my love for tea culture and create creative drinks using interesting teas that people aren’t familiar with. It’s been two years now since I have started AKO, but along the way I ran into a job opportunity with ELOREA.
ELOREA had taken me in for a unique reason that I don’t normally share with my employers which was my small business. I thought that mentioning this would deter me from having a job with other businesses, but they seemed to really enjoy how I had already experienced making drinks. That experience laid the groundwork for my involvement in ELOREA’s Scent & Sip experience, a concept developed by the brand, where I was able to contribute through recipe development and flavor interpretation.
ELOREA created an olfactory–taste experience where scent and flavor aren’t just linked — they’re in dialogue. Can you share the origin story of how this idea came to life?
ELOREA started with drinks inspired by Korean cafe culture, but soon realized that this alone didn’t fully reflect the creative ambition behind the brand. That’s when the team began exploring something more.
The founder and team wanted to pursue something more ambitious and showed that we could go further. That’s how the idea for the Scent & Sip experience came to life: a unique pairing of fragrance and craft drinks. Each drink is thoughtfully inspired by one of our fragrances, creating a layered and immersive journey for the senses. Once the concept was in place, I began developing recipes inspired by each scent to bring that vision to life.
You have a deep background in tea, which, like fragrance, is emotional, layered, and sensory. How does your understanding of tea help you interpret scent into flavor? What parallels or bridges do you find between the two worlds?
I think that with the help of my knowledge of tea culture, smell was already an important factor in the dialogue of the drinks I made for ELOREA. Drinking tea in gong fu cha was a sensory experience for me. It uses a lot of visual, smell, and of course taste that can tell a story or even a nostalgic feeling. Tea could be able to tell you a lot just based on smell. They have such a unique fragrance that has so many layered notes to analyze and identify. Once I smelled each fragrance, it was so similar to how I was approaching tea that I thought the fragrance could guide me in the approach of how we could translate this.
It was also just such a fun idea. Tea and fragrances similarly were able to tell stories and invoke a feeling for me. Why not have this be what drives our drinks? We could have the opportunity to make something unique and be challenged with creating something inspired by another medium.
When you’re handed a new ELOREA fragrance, what’s your first instinct? Are you looking for specific notes, or is it more about chasing a feeling — something intangible you can later translate into taste?
JANG (장) — SOY SAUCE FOAM COFFEE
When approaching fragrances in The Timeless Legacy Collection, I was inspired by the concept of timelessness. The collection had such a mature sensibility, and I saw an opportunity to pay homage to my bartending experience by creating a zero-proof, classic cocktail–inspired menu as a personal creative direction. While some drinks are still in development, this concept became a helpful lens through which I could interpret each fragrance.
The next steps following that concept was defining the dialogue. What were these fragrances highlighting? What feeling was it giving me? How do I want to design the ingredients and in what format would they make sense?
At the end of the day though, I wanted to chase the fun. The concept of making, for example, an old fashioned espresso and a soy sauce foam was crazy, but it worked!
Beyond ingredients, tea-making teaches patience, presence, and intention. Are there any philosophies or rituals from that world that still shape how you approach creativity as a whole?
Yes, in so many ways tea has changed my whole perspective of the creative process. I think that holistically, tea has taught me not only all of the above but also about connection. Am I connecting with myself/ connecting with others? I feel like I’ve been going about my life in that way and it fuels how I approach anything that I create. We also live in a world where we are so disconnected at times even though we have so many ways to connect. Maybe it’s the “grind mindset” or “hot girl summer” that we like to romanticize, but no time for rest and appreciating the present moment.
ELOREA is all about honoring Korean heritage while pushing it forward — blending tradition with a modern point of view. Do you find that same ethos guiding your own process when designing drinks to pair with their fragrances? How do you interpret or evolve tradition in your own way?
It's a very fine line to balance honoring tradition whilst innovating to something new. It comes with actual knowledge and respect for one's culture before actually attempting to do something that doesn’t come from your own experience. With ELOREA, I think that we not only want to honor Korean heritage but to also give respect to Korean flavors as well. Understanding this, I apply my own experiences in making drinks towards these flavors. I have a set of rules that I can choose to follow, or if done right, break them (respectfully).
HAENYEO (해녀) — SHAKEN COCONUT-LIME COOLER
Could you walk us through one of the drinks from the new offerings — starting with the first whiff of the fragrance and ending with the final sip? What story or sensation were you aiming to create through that pairing?
Haenyeo (해녀) is a fragrance that is so bold with its fresh oceanic scent. When I first smelled this fragrance I was immediately transported to the beach. This scent was based on the Jeju island Korean female divers, who fearlessly free dive to gather seafood to support their families. Its top notes were of pink salt and had a slight tropical earthy tone to it. Initially, this was going to be a difficult drink as it was pretty salt-forward and salt, in a café setting, is used to enhance flavors like sweetness, not be the main star.
However, pulling from classic cocktails, margaritas thrive in salt and citrus. We went through many iterations to get it just right, and I focused on exploring how salt could become the key flavor — palatable yet true to the spirit of the fragrance. Should I use ingredients that honor Jeju island's native foods? What can I do to replicate that oceanic feeling?” The goal for this drink was to create that transport. Where you can faintly taste the ocean breeze, whilst smelling the fresh and cooling breeze of the beach. Through many trails, we got to a happy place where the drink encapsulates that feeling. Visually it looks like a wave that just crashed on the shore. Whilst the taste has a citrus and coconut body, emulating that earth tone and a refreshing margarita-esque savoriness as its main component.
Have there been any pairings that completely caught you off guard? A moment where scent and flavor did something unexpected but somehow worked beautifully?
One drink in particular that definitely keeps surprising me is Be By My Side. It’s a clarified coffee with a creme de cacao and rose infused cream. The idea was to marry these two opposing flavors. The smell however, has a velvety suede body and citrus and spice undertone. The drink on the other hand, was citrus and spice body with the cream being more of an accent than an undertone. It was a role reversal but I thought it was a beautiful compliment to opposing sides.
In your process, how do you know when a drink is finished? Is it a taste, a feeling — what tells you it's complete?
Usually it just clicks. There’s obviously a consensus with everyone on the team before it is officially “complete”, but it usually happens when I can just close my eyes, smell the fragrance, and taste the drink, and I go, “Yup, that’s it.” It has to accomplish at least three things for me. Is it tasty? Does it introduce something unique and interesting? Lastly, can this drink represent the fragrance it is attached to? Taste is king. I’ve always said this. There’s no point in continuing a drink if the foundation of it isn’t tasty.
We also have the opportunity to create drinks in a unique way, so using unique techniques and ingredients must give each drink something special, just like how one person could like one particular fragrance. A key factor that can make or break the completion of a drink is if its identity was translated from fragrance clearly. We can make something that is unique and tasty, but we still need to be within the parameters of what this fragrance is trying to invoke. The intention has to be set from the beginning and when the drink makes me feel like how I smelled it, then I feel like the drink is at a good place to be presented.
Of all the fragrances, is there one that feels especially personal to you? One that stirs something in you, or reflects part of your own story?
YES. Earth (곤) and Heaven (건) for sure. Earth felt like a representation of me and I felt like it showcased my experience with drinks. Whilst heaven showed my experience with tea and the café scene that I grew up in. They both show the love and care I have for the café scene in LA. However, they do break the rules a little bit which shows my personality in wanting to give more than just what is expected. Breaking that expectation whilst still being true to myself was always a struggle for me in my life and I think that Earth as a fragrance and drink accomplishes my passion in this space.
When someone experiences one of your drinks alongside a fragrance, what do you hope they take away? A mood, a memory, a shift in perspective — or maybe just a new way to connect with their senses?
I just hope people walk away having tried something new — maybe something that makes them think a little differently about scent and flavor. Every drink is made with intention and inspired by one of ELOREA’s fragrances, so the experience feels layered and personal.
Some might not expect that kind of experience from a café, and that’s totally fine. But for those who are curious, if it leaves even a small impression or moment of reflection — then I think I’d have done my job.
To stay up to date on ELOREA’s latest fragrance launches, café offerings, and events, follow @elorea on Instagram and visit elorea.com. From bold new drinks to thoughtfully crafted scents, there’s always something fresh brewing.
Photos — ELOREA
