Lurisia Italian Lemonade from Piedmont
For decades, Lurisia has been making Italian sodas from citrus fruits with a proven origin: Chinotto from the Slow Food Presidium in Savona, lemons from the Amalfi Coast, blood oranges from Mount Etna. The water for these drinks comes from their own spring high up on Monte Pigna, in the Ligurian Alps – which, however, are located in Piedmont.
Lurisia stands for Italian lemonade that calls its ingredients by name. The town of Lurisia is part of the municipality of Roccaforte Mondovì in the province of Cuneo, a good seventy kilometers south of Turin. The fact that the brand still likes to refer to the Ligurian Alps has a good reason – the mountain range is named that, but the village is located in Piedmont.
"From the heart of the Ligurian Alps," Lurisia writes about its water – and it is precisely this phrasing that leads to the misunderstanding that runs through many a product list.
We carry five varieties, each in the small 275-milliliter bottle: Chinotto, Gazzosa, two Aranciate, and the Acqua Tonica. Bitter-spicy, citrusy-fresh, sparkling – the entire range lies between these.
A quarry worker and a vein of water around 1900
The story begins with a mishap: around 1900, a worker in the Nivolano quarry struck a vein of water while loosening stone slabs from the rock.
These slabs are called "lose" in Piedmontese, and the town likely takes its name from them – via "losera," the quarry, the stream "Loresa" later became Lurisia. The derivation is not entirely certain, but it is widely accepted. The man with the lantern, who is still on every label today, is this very quarry worker.
Monte Pigna above it reaches 1,768 meters; the springs are located at over 1,300 meters and bear the names Santa Barbara and Garbarino. The water is exceptionally low in minerals, with a residue of around 36 milligrams per liter, making it one of the lightest in Italy.
For a lemonade, this is not a minor detail. Soft water with little inherent taste lets the fruit shine, while hard water masks it. Anyone who has ever mixed the same syrup with two different types of water knows how significant the difference can be.
Marie Curie came in 1918 because of the stones
On August 16, 1918, Marie Curie was in Lurisia, commissioned by the Italian government and accompanied by the chemist Camillo Porlezza.
She did not come because of the water, but because of the rock: five years earlier, Professor Lincio had found large deposits of autunite, a uranium-bearing mineral, at the Nivolano site, and Italy was searching for radium for the field hospitals of the First World War. Curie took measurements on-site, took samples back to Paris, and made the place famous overnight.
This fame turned the town into a spa. In 1940, the doctor Pietro Cignolini and the two Ligurian entrepreneurs David Garbarino and Piero Sciaccaluga founded the first thermal bath – and bottling began in the same year. One of the two springs still bears the name Garbarino today.
The bath still exists as an independent establishment with two natural steam grottos in the mountain. It does not belong to the beverage division and was never included in the sale when the brand changed hands. So, if you drive to Roccaforte Mondovì, you will find both: the spa and the bottling plant, a good two hours' drive from Turin and barely one from the Mediterranean.
Five varieties from light to bitter black
The range does not follow a flavor logic, but rather five different citrus fruits – and each brings its own origin.
The Gazzosa is the brightest, made with juice and infusion of the Sfusato lemon from the terraces of the Amalfi Coast, following a recipe from the 1950s. The Aranciata Rossa is the fruitiest, with twenty percent juice from Sicilian blood oranges of the Moro, Tarocco, and Sanguinello varieties.
The Aranciata remains round and fruity, its orange juice accompanied by an extract of Apulian oranges from the Gargano. Things get more bitter with the Chinotto, the dark classic with caramelized sugar. The Acqua Tonica goes the furthest: twelve percent lemon juice, quinine, and the highest Chinotto content in the entire range.
Only the Acqua Tonica contains quinine and is labeled accordingly. And two of the recipes date back to the 1950s, when Gazzosa and Chinotto were staples in every Italian bar and no one gave a second thought to whether a lemonade needed an origin.
At Lurisia, the fruit percentages are clearly stated on the label: twenty percent for both Aranciate, twelve percent lemon juice in the Tonic, plus the Chinotto and lemon extracts with their decimal places. You don't need to do the math to know what you are drinking – and you can see it too, when the Aranciata Rossa forms a fine sediment in the glass.
Chinotto from Savona protected since 2004
The most interesting raw material in the range is the Chinotto, a myrtle-leaved citrus species that has been growing on the Ligurian Riviera di Ponente since the 16th century.
A sailor is said to have brought it from China to Savona, where it supported an entire coastal region until the 1920s. Then came freezing winters and cheaper imports. What remained were a few hundred plants between Varazze and Pietra Ligure – until Slow Food declared the Chinotto di Savona a Presidium in 2004 and restored its cultivation.
Lurisia sources the infusion for two varieties from this very Presidium: 0.03 percent is in the Chinotto, 0.8 percent in the Acqua Tonica. It is harvested by hand from mid-September to the end of November, as the thin peel cannot withstand machine harvesting.
The Chinotto is not a bitter orange in the usual sense, but a distinct citrus species with narrow, myrtle-like leaves and fruits barely larger than a table tennis ball. No one eats them raw. Their entire value lies in the aroma of the peel and blossom, and without buyers for this aroma, the trees would likely no longer exist.
A lemonade that helps maintain an almost extinct crop – we like that. And it is the reason why we carry the Chinotto, even though it doesn't please everyone on the first sip.
A bottle in the museum and a tip for beginners
So far, Lurisia has received recognition primarily for its design: the "Bolle & Stille" water bottle, designed by Sottsass Associati, won the World Beverage Innovation Award for best glass bottle in 2009 and received an honorable mention at the Compasso d'Oro ADI in 2011, Italy's oldest design award.
Incidentally, the bottle cites the very lantern of the quarry worker that has been on the labels since the beginning. More than a hundred years after the discovery in the Nivolano, a design icon still carries the lamp of a man whose name no one wrote down.
As for the lemonades themselves, we are not aware of any awards – which says little about them, as lemonades are rarely tasted and even more rarely awarded prizes.
If you want to start: choose the Gazzosa if you like lemon, and the Aranciata Rossa if you have guests with children. For an aperitivo platter, the Aranciata and the Acqua Tonica belong side by side, one juicy and round, the other clearly bitter. Those who are serious reach for the Chinotto – it divides opinions, and that is exactly what makes it interesting. Try them all, ideally across the board.
You can find more in this direction with Galvanina from Romagna, in our lemonade assortment, and among the Italian specialties. Salute.
