Friday, May 19

10E2593: Switchel "Swizzle"

Sounding like something the great BFG might serve at a picnic, SWIZZLE is a switchel-delivery-method of carbonated water/ginger/apple cider and maple from UP MOUNTAIN SWITCHEL.



Switchel, haymakers punch. 4 simple ingredients when Up Mountain Switchel make it for you; local organic maple syrup, local organic apple cider vinegar, organic fresh ginger root, and Berkshire mountain water. This brand gives you a huge hit of ginger. Fantastic on its own or as a mixer. Trialed in the outdoor markets and fairs of Vermont.

"Like maple sugaring, haying a hill farm in the pre-mechanized era was a chancy, nerve-wracking job, in which Gramp's patience with me frequently wore thin... after helping unload the wagon I could run to the milk house cooling tank for the stone jug of switchel which my grandmother made up each morning... the traditional northern New England field hands' drink decocted from pure spring water with a touch of vinegar..."
- Frank Mosher, Northern Borders

Laura Ingalls-Wilder drank it, as did Herman Melville. Unbeknownst to them it provided electrolytes, anti-inflammatories and more - a fenceposter gatorade. Switchel may have originated in the Caribbean (ginger and molasses give a clue) but was transformed in New England with the substitution of maple syrup or sometimes honey.

This brand has always delivered in glass, never plastic. As they note; "In the United States alone, 50 billion plastic bottles were used last year (that's over 7x the entire world population). Only 23% were recycled, which means 38 billion ended up in our landfills, on our streets, and in our oceans." Not on their watch.