Skip to content
The Fabled Pour
Email

Country

Latvia

I have one sourced drink connected to Latvia. The label on each card says how: where it began, what the country is known for, what people drink there, or where the origin is disputed.

Back to the World atlas

Latvia on the world map. Boundaries are generalized Natural Earth data.

Drinks of Latvia

Signature drinks and regional ones, with the evidence behind each. A drink marked non-alcoholic has no alcohol in the traditional serve.

  • Illustration of Riga Black Balsam with Hot Blackcurrant Juice: hot very dark purple-black, nearly opaque, with steam, in a heatproof glass mug.

    Riga Black Balsam with Hot Blackcurrant Juice

    Riga

    PopularRegional drink

    Riga Black Balsam, the Latvian herbal liqueur, taken with hot blackcurrant juice. Riga's tourism site lists this among the common ways to drink it, alongside neat, in coffee or tea, in cocktails and over vanilla ice cream.

    Wikipedia traces Riga Black Balsam to the apothecary Abraham Kunze and a recipe from 1752, with ceramic bottles first designed in 1969, and says it is often considered the national drink of Latvia. Riga's tourism site describes it as pitch-black. No source fetched dates the hot blackcurrant serve.

    Made with: Riga Black Balsam, hot blackcurrant juice.

    Confidence: lowEvidence: liveriga.com (opens in a new tab), en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)

Map data: Natural Earth, public domain.