Rivella: the Swissest soda
Drinking whey like Miss Muffett
I was well into adulthood before I properly read the ingredient label on Rivella, a popular Swiss soda, and realized what made it unique: it contains whey.
Not just traces of milk, like a cookie produced in a factory that also makes peanut products. Whey, or the less appetizing-sounding “milk serum” makes up 35% of Rivella, with fruit and herb extracts, sugar, and carbon dioxide rounding out the rest of the flavor profile.
I have been drinking Rivella since I was a kid, which is perhaps the only way to develop a taste for it. Words to describe the flavor profile escape me. I found a reddit thread where some compared it to a combination of ginger ale and bubble tea, “herbal tea with a drop of milk,” or American Smarties. I would not have come up with those flavors on my own, though Rivella resembles ginger ale in color, and now that the Smarties seed has been planted, I vaguely get taste it. But I don’t notice a milky taste, not even a drop.
Rivella will celebrate its 75th birthday in a few years. For its 50th, the company published a book about its history: 1952-2002, Rivella und seine Geschichte, 50 Jahre Lebensfreude (Rivella and Its History, 50 Years of Joie de Vivre). I found a copy, and here’s a bit of Swiss soda history, presented by Rivella.
The soda was meant to be a beer. In 1949, Jean Barth, the brother of Rivella’s founder Robert, traveled to the US with a recipe for a whey-based beer, looking to sell it to a beverage manufacturer. His trip was unsuccessful – companies wanted a market-ready product, not something that had only been lab tested. Jean returned to Switzerland two years later and passed the recipe on to his brother Robert.
Robert, nearing the completion of his law degree, started experimenting with the recipe, mixing mineral water, herbal flavors, and whey sourced from a German Camembert dairy in his apartment’s bathroom. He quickly realized he needed someone with actual scientific expertise, and he brought in Hans Süsli, a biologist at the Zurich Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (ETH Zurich). Together, they developed the recipe Rivella uses today.
In 1951, Barth founded the Milkin-Institut in Stäfa, a town on Lake Zürich. He named his product Rivella after the Italian-Swiss town Riva San Vitale, which Barth supposedly spotted in a train directory after spending many hours brainstorming a name with a PR guy. Swiss law prohibited using location and people’s names for products, so Barth then flipped through an Italian dictionary looking for “riva” words and landed on rivelazione – “revelation”.
The Milkin-Institut officially opened on March 13, 1952, welcoming guests and press to try the new product. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung described the reporter’s experience of hesitatingly taking his first sip of Rivella,
“... not only because we were embarking on the adventure of trying out a new drink that might not please us, but also because we wanted to treat our nose to the scent of the flower that this drink exudes.”
They liked it.
Others, specifically the Swiss Mineral Springs Association (SMS), whose member companies produced mineral waters and mineral-water based drinks like Elmer Citro and Pepita (a Sprite equivalent and a grapefruit-flavored soda, both delicious). Despite the SMS’s boycott, Rivella managed to create its own distribution network and later, its own beverage association. In 1953, the company dropped Milkin-Institut and became Rivella, a corporation. The following year, they moved production to Rothirst, in central Switzerland.
Though wildly successful in Switzerland, with 95% brand recognition (according to the company), Rivella drink never took off in the US. In 2004, the company tried a year-long test, selling canned Rivella in the health food sections of Florida Publix. It cost four times the price of soda, and after a year, the company decided not to spend more money convincing Americans to adopt their “health” beverage. They blamed the failure on Americans’ unfamiliarity with the product.
“Swiss people grow up with Rivella; they are almost as familiar with it as breast milk,” spokeswoman Monika Christenser told swissinfo. While I get what she’s trying to say, this is a really weird comparison. Hopefully breast milk references weren’t part of their marketing campaign.
Rivella met a similar fate in the UK in 1999, but it succeeded early on in the Netherlands. There, it debuted in as Rivella Blue, a calorie-free version, as requested by the Dutch Diabetes Society. A year later, Rivella Blue made it to Switzerland. Ads promoting it read “Scared of sugar? Then Rivella blue!” (Angst vor Zucker? Dann Rivella blau).
Today, Rivella comes in four varieties – the original red; blue, the low-calorie version; green, made with green tea extract, though I haven’t been able to find it; and recently, yellow has been reintroduced as a dairy-free, low-sugar option for vegans.
My mom didn’t grow up drinking Rivella, but once there were grandkids, my grandmother started buying. There was always a bottle in her kitchen (never in the fridge) when we visited, with back-ups in the cellar. As an adult, I always had at least one Rivella during our trips over to see my parents.
Now that I live here, it’s less of a craving, as I can get it whenever. I bought a bottle in Zurich a few weeks ago. The first sips were refreshing, but as it warmed up, the sweetness became cloying. I tried vegan Rivella (yellow) as research. I got that whiff of Smarties, but the lower sugar was just about right. Perhaps this will be my go-to Rivella, but perhaps I’ve outgrown this beverage.
Then I saw Helvetic Kitchen has a cocktail recipe for cherry liqueur and Rivella, and maybe that’s an adult way I can enjoy my milk soda.
Sources
1952-2002, Rivella und Seine Geschichte: 50 Jahre Lebensfreude. 2001.
I love starting my day with a Linda-chuckle!
Never heard of this drink, but would try it!