RIGA-BLACK-BALSAM
“… The composition of the Black Riga Balsam includes 24 ingredients. A significant part of their vegetable
origin: St. John’s wort, raspberry, lingonberry, lime blossom, ginger, gentian root from alpine meadows.
Most of the ingredients are local, but there are also imported from afar, even from another hemisphere, like Peruvian balsam oil. But birch buds are taken only from Latvian trees, moreover, only from those growing in the protected Kemeri swamps. The infusion is aged in oak barrels for 30 days, after which it is a reddish bitter 45-degree liquid.
In the final product, it is only 4% – so that several 300-liter barrels make it possible to fill 2.7 million bottles annually. The essence is mixed with grain alcohol, brandy, juices, honey and burnt sugar are added, giving the balm its characteristic blackness.
A bottled drink chemically interacts with ceramic containers even before six months. The characteristic opaque bottle, the design of which has remained almost unchanged for more than a century, is not only a tribute to tradition, but also a way to protect the contents from sunlight and temperature.
fluctuations…”
Photo from the book “JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF BLACK BALM.” Album. © Alexander Nikishin
The list of Black Riga Balsam ingredients is in the public domain, and their
proportions are a mystery behind seven seals. The legendary drink is produced in the workshops of the Riga plant, which is called “Latvijas Balzams”. The factory began operating in 1900. It was the project of the Prime Minister of Russia S.Yu. Witte for the entire Russian Empire, which included Livonia and Courland, and now Latvia. The government of Nikolai Romanov transferred the private alcohol business into the hands of the state. The main reason was simple – to fill the treasury with tax revenues from the sale of alcoholic beverages. The monopoly also closed private establishments that sold vodka. Trade in taverns, taverns and taverns has long been criticized. Here they drank half to death and even in debt.
Photo from the book “JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF BLACK BALM.” Album. © Alexander Nikishin
Factories where Black was produced in the old days
Riga Balsam, are monuments
history of industrial architecture in Latvia.
They are admired by tourists, and on the territory of the plant
“Latvijas Balzams”, which was opened at the beginning
of the twentieth century, they plan to house the Museum of Vodka and
exhibit surviving product samples
hundred years ago.
They gave water on the security of the future harvest, agricultural implements, and even wives and children. “Tavern riots” regularly flared up in the empire. We decided to end this! The taverns were closed on the same day throughout
territories of the Russian Empire, including Latgale and Courland. They came to replace
called “state liquor stores”, state-owned vodka shops, civilized places for the sale of vodka and other takeaway alcohol. The closure of taverns created a problem: more than a hundred
thousands of unemployed Jewish tavern-keepers poured abroad into emigration! Mostly moved to North America. Most of them left the Latvian Libava, in the port of which large ocean-going ships of the Russian-American Line moored, such as, for example, the twin-screw passenger steamer Tsar, not much smaller than the legendary Titanic.
