Lemonade

Lemonade in glass bottles from France and Italy

Lemonade is a drink made from water, carbonation, sugar, and fruit. In this selection, it comes from houses that have been bottling in glass according to their own recipes for decades. The swing-top bottle from Morteau in the Doubs stands alongside small bottles from Piedmont and Rimini; in winter, a variety from England is added. Lemon, orange, and grapefruit form the backbone of the assortment, while chinotto and bergamot make it exciting.

Lemonade is a carbonated soft drink that comes ready to drink in a bottle, and here you will find it in glass. Water, carbonation, and sugar provide the framework, while the fruit provides the character. The word reached us from the French, where limonade originally meant only sweetened lemon water, and to this day, every good selection begins with the lemon. French and Italian varieties stand side by side here, along with organic varieties from Rimini and a tonic for your home bar.

At the bistro counter and at the home bar

In France, lemonade is as much a part of a bistro as the zinc counter, and it is rarely ordered neat.

As a diabolo, it gets a dash of syrup—green with mint or red with grenadine—and can be found on the menu of every café. The heavy swing-top bottle with the porcelain stopper stays on the table and makes that satisfying sound when opened, something a crown cap just cannot replicate.

In Italy, the clear lemon soda is called gazzosa, named after the gas in the bottle, and the dark chinotto long stood in every bar next to the espresso. The chinotto belongs to the aperitivo hour before dinner, the gazzosa to fish and fried dishes, and at Lurisia, both are still made according to recipes from the 1950s.

This category brings exactly these two worlds together: French lemonade from the Doubs and Italian lemonade from Piedmont and the Adriatic.

From Morteau, Piedmont, and Rimini

The largest part of the shelf is filled by La Mortuacienne from the Rième house in Morteau in the high valley of the Doubs, made according to the same basic recipe since 1921.

It is available in liter bottles with a swing-top for the dining table and as a small gastro-bottle with a screw cap. The house carries ten varieties, from lemon, orange, mandarin, and pomegranate to Pink Agrumes, in which four citrus fruits play together. There is also a cola, and in winter, a variety with apple and spices.

Two houses come from Italy. Lurisia bottles in Roccaforte Mondovì in Piedmont, where the spring is located at over 1,300 meters on Monte Pigna. The small 275-milliliter bottles contain Gazzosa, Chinotto, Aranciata, and Aranciata Rossa. Galvanina from Rimini makes its organic-quality varieties: lemon, orange, pink grapefruit, bergamot, and chinotto. All of them come in the embossed glass bottle that won a design award in Tokyo in 2011.

In winter, the mandarin cranberry variety from Belvoir in Leicestershire joins the shelf. The tonic water from the Windspiel Manufaktur in the Eifel region is also included, because a tonic is also a lemonade—just with quinine.

Between bright lemon and dark bitter orange

The most important question before the glass is whether it should be lemony, tart, or fruity, as the entire shelf is organized along these three directions.

Lemony and clear are the Citron from Rième, the Gazzosa from Lurisia with juice and infusion of the Sfusato lemon from the Amalfi Coast, and the organic lemon from Galvanina with fruits from Sicily. The lemon with mint from the swing-top bottle adds a cool herbal note.

Things get tart with the pink pomelo and the pink grapefruit, with the bergamot from Calabria with its scent of Earl Grey, and especially with the chinotto. This dark bitter orange lemonade divides opinions, which is exactly why it remains interesting. Lurisia works with an infusion of chinotto from Savona, while Galvanina uses its aroma and herbal extracts; both taste bitter first and sweet only afterwards.

Fruity and round are the orange varieties: the Aranciata Rossa with the juice of Sicilian blood oranges, the mandarin, and the bright red pomegranate. The cola from Morteau goes its own way—caramelly and spicy with a discernible citrus component—as does the crystal-clear variety that Rième simply calls Nature.

Cold syrup, soft water, and real fruit

The difference arises long before the carbonation, namely with the sugar syrup, the water, and the fruit—and it takes time in all three cases.

At Rième, the sugar dissolves cold in a one-and-a-half-meter-high copper tube, through which the solution sinks downward at eleven degrees Celsius solely by its own weight. Heat would be faster, but it would dull the fruit, so the syrup remains clear and the fizz in the glass remains fine and persistent.

At Lurisia, the water is the key, as the spring at Monte Pigna is among the lightest in Italy with about 36 milligrams of residue per liter. Soft water with little taste of its own gives the fruit room, while hard water pushes itself to the forefront.

Galvanina focuses on the fruit itself: lemons from Sicily, bergamots from the Ionian coast of Calabria, and pink grapefruits that ripen on the tree. Even the color comes from the plant, such as black carrot juice in the grapefruit lemonade. This gives every variety its own profile: acidic for the lemon, floral for the bergamot, and juicy for the aranciata.

Families in Morteau and the Vale of Belvoir

Behind most of these bottles are families who have passed their recipes down through generations—in one case, a spring with a Roman past.

Marcel-Alcide Rième was twenty when he founded a lemonade factory in Morteau in 1921 with his brother-in-law Adrien Bouhéret. He dedicated the name to the women of the town, the Mortuaciennes. His son Jean followed in 1960, and grandson Didier moved the bottling operation to the larger town of Beure near Besançon in 1981. Since 2001, Benoît has been running the house in the fourth generation, which celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 2021.

In Rimini, Galvanina has been bottling water from the spring at Colle Paradiso since 1910, where the Romans once had their thermal baths. Every bottle bears the coat of arms of the noble family to whom the spring once belonged. To this day, the Lurisia label features the quarryman with the lantern who discovered the water vein around 1900; it has been bottled since 1940.

On the farm in the Vale of Belvoir, Mary Manners made the first elderflower syrup in her farmhouse kitchen in 1984, and her husband drove the first crates to local farm shops. Today, her son Pev runs the house with 60 acres of organic elderberries, the flowers of which are hand-picked and processed within minutes.

On the dining table, at a picnic, and in a long drink

Lemonade from a glass bottle belongs on the table: ice-cold, with a slice of lemon in a tall glass, and served in such a way that everyone can pour their own.

For lunch in the garden, the swing-top bottles stand between baguette, cheese, and radishes, and the children drink the same lemon as the adults. For an alcohol-free apéro, chinotto and Pink Agrumes take on the role of a Spritz. The small gastro-bottles are perfect for trips to the lake because they can be resealed.

In the home bar, the tart varieties stand up to alcohol where sweet soda would collapse: bergamot with gin, cola with rum, and grapefruit with tequila. Those who prefer to mix their own will find the base for a diabolo among the syrups.

In winter, the shelf shifts its focus: the apple and spice variety from Morteau arrives, which can be carefully warmed to make punch, along with the mandarin cranberry from England for festive meals. If you prefer your fruit still, you will find it in our juices, and everything non-alcoholic can be found under non-alcoholic drinks and under beverages. And then—*pop*.