Pink Citrus Lemonade

Pink Agrumes combines four citrus fruits in one bottle

Agrumes is the French word for citrus fruits, and this lemonade contains no fewer than four of them. Blood orange, grapefruit, navel orange, and lemon result in a delicate pink hue and the most restrained sweetness that the range has to offer.

Pink Agrumes Lemonade is the latest creation from the house of Rième, and with 7.9 grams of sugar per hundred milliliters, it sits at the lower end of what is bottled under the La Mortuacienne label. While the Pampelmousse focuses solely on grapefruit, four fruits play together here. The result is a pale pink in the glass and a taste that cannot be pinned down to just one fruit.

Sweet, tangy, fruity with a bitter finish

The first sip is blood orange, dark and a little earthy. Behind that, the grapefruit pushes through with its bitterness, and right at the end, the lemon comes in to clean things up.

The navel orange holds it all together; it is the sweet, seedless variety that provides the foundation for the other three. Without it, the mixture would fall apart into something too tart and too sour.

It is precisely this composition that makes the lemonade more interesting than any single fruit. It reveals what it has one after another instead of serving everything at once. Its pink is paler than that of the Pampelmousse, more dusty rose than magenta.

Over ice, with vodka, with savory snacks

Ice-cold and neat, it is the lemonade for anyone who finds all others too sweet.

In a glass with plenty of ice and a slice of blood orange, it becomes a non-alcoholic aperitif that can hold its own against any spritz. With vodka or tonic, its structure remains intact because the bitterness provides support, and the interplay of the four fruits stands out most clearly when chilled.

When it comes to food, it pairs well with anything salty. With Manzanilla olives with lemon, almonds, or crisps, a glass turns into a little happy hour. One bottle makes five well-filled glasses, preferably served in a carafe with plenty of ice.

How a new variety is created at Rième

A company that has stuck to a basic recipe since 1921 could easily stagnate. At Rième, the opposite has happened, and Pink Agrumes is the latest proof of this.

This is made possible by a clear division of labor. The sugar base has followed the same cold process for over a hundred years, while the fruit side is completely reimagined. If you don't touch the base, you are all the more free to work on the fruit.

The impetus for this came from Didier, who took over management in 1981 and moved production from the original headquarters in Morteau to the larger Beure near Besançon. There was room for experimentation there, and as Didier set it up, the cold sugar base remained untouched. In the eighties, this first resulted in pine syrup, which later became a lemonade of its own.

His son Benoît has continued this since 2001 and has expanded the range to ten varieties. Pink Agrumes is one of the latest and is aimed at all those who have found classic lemonade too sweet. Tradition that continues to evolve. Respect.

If you prefer a tart direction, you will also find the pink grapefruit lemonade or the clear lemonade, which shows the process most clearly. All ten varieties can be found at La Mortuacienne. The deposit is listed separately.