Gazosa
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Gazosa is Ticino’s lemonade: water, sugar, lemon, and enough bubbles to tickle the nose. Lemon or mandarin, everyone has a favourite and defends it. It is drunk chilled at the grotto, and some pour it into the boccalino, half and half with wine, to make a “mezz e mezz”.
Before the factories, it was made at home. You boiled the water, sugar and lemon, sometimes with sage, elderflower or rosemary, filled the bottles, and set them in the sun on the balcony so the gas would form by itself, keeping an eye out in case one burst. The first factories opened in the late 19th century; others followed all over Italian-speaking Switzerland, as far as the Mesolcina valley, and horse-drawn carts delivered to the grottos one by one.
The bottle has always mattered as much as the drink. The first, green, was closed with a cork held down by a wire, like champagne, and people dubbed Gazosa the poor man’s champagne. Then came the marble bottle, invented by an Englishman: fizz pressure held a glass marble against the neck, and to open it you pushed the marble back with a finger. Children broke the bottles to fish out the marble, so few have survived. Today, Ticino’s makers have agreed to all keep the same 35-centilitre bottle with a mechanical stopper.
Sources: RSI, “Storia della gazzosa, bevanda iconica della Svizzera italiana”; swissinfo, “Ticino lemonade loses its fizz”.
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