On Riga Black Balsam

A 270-year-old balm that is regarded as the national drink of Latvia. Sold in dark clay bottles. Some people love it, some don't. We explore the story and legends surrounding Riga Black Balsam, and hold a tasting with friends.

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Transcript

On Riga Black Balsam

Unpacking the black bottle

It's a dark, glossy liquid - almost inky. You can smell it before the glass reaches your lip: wormwood, bitter orange peel, something earthy and medicinal, something sweet lurking beneath. The bottle it came from isn't glass; it's clay, the colour of a damp Rīga pavement. One sip, and 270-odd years of Latvian history roll across your tongue. It is regarded as Latvia's national drink. It elicits a “Marmite” reaction. Some people love it, some don’t. Some drink it straight (hello, wife), some mix it into a cocktail, some add it to a coffee, and some pour it over ice cream.

I've been circling this drink for the past 30 years. Often offered, frequently rejected. For the sake of this podcast, I’ve invited some friends to help me taste every flavour the liquor is produced in. But before the tasting, the story. Because with Black Balsam, the story is half the drink.

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From apothecary to national drink

Long before Rīga had its own balsam, the idea of a "balsam", a medicinal herbal extract, was already spreading across Europe. The tradition is sometimes traced to Marco Polo, who is said to have brought the first balsams from his travels in China at the end of the 13th century. From the 13th to the 17th centuries, the Hanseatic League, of which Rīga was a proud, prosperous member, carried these herbal preparations across Europe and into Russia. Recipes for balsam were documented in Rīga itself as far back as the 1500s.

So when we talk about the "beginning" of Riga Black Balsam in 1752, we are really talking about the moment when a long regional tradition crystallised into a single, branded drink.

The traditional recipe was created in 1752 by Abraham Kunze, an apothecary in Rīga. This is important: Black Balsam was not born in a tavern or a noble's kitchen. It was born behind the counter of a pharmacy. It was medicine first, pleasure second.

In December 1762, Kunze placed an advertisement in the Rigische Anzeigen newspaper describing the balsam's healing properties and offering it in flasks and bottles sealed with wax bearing his initials “A.K." for two state thalers per shtof. To my knowledge, that is one of the earliest examples of branded alcohol marketing in this part of Europe.

Kunze was not universally loved, mind you. In 1766, a Rīga glazier, Peteris Adams, claimed Kunze had taken the recipe from him ten years earlier. The Rīga City Council rejected the complaint, partly because Adams had only spoken up after Kunze's death. Kunze's widow, Eva Sofia, continued to sell it as Kuncena balzams and spent years fighting counterfeiters in the courts.

From 1845, the drink passed into the hands of its most famous industrial producer: Albert Wolfschmidt. By 1860, Black Balsam had won its first Grand Prix at an international fair. It was no longer a Rīga curiosity; it was a European product. The characteristic clay bottle still used today dates from this era, and the manufacturer now calls it "the 25th secret component” because the clay continues to shape the flavour for the first six months after bottling.

Then comes the break in the story. In 1939, as most of Latvia's roughly 62,000 Baltic Germans left ahead of the Soviet occupation, the balsam masters went with them, and the recipe walked out the door. For years, there was no Riga Black Balsam. A few years after the Second World War, a group of former employees pieced the formula back together from fragments, and since then, we are told, the recipe has remained unchanged.

Think about that for a moment. A drink that is now a symbol of Latvian identity was, for a stretch of the 20th century, almost extinct, saved by the memories of the people who had once made it.

Today, Black Balsam is produced by Latvijas Balzams, part of the Amber Beverage Group. It is sold in more than 35 countries and has won over 100 international awards. One in four bottles is now made for export.

The story doesn’t stop with shiny export trophies, though. Recently, Latvia’s tax office has been writing a new chapter for Black Balsam’s makers. Amber Latvijas balzams, the Rīga producer behind those clay bottles, has run up tens of millions of euros in unpaid taxes. By late 2025, the State Revenue Service was pursuing roughly 17–18 million in overdue payments; by early 2026, public reports were citing tax debts approaching 28 million euros, with the company seeking legal protection from its creditors in court.

The firm has now entered Latvia’s tiesiskās aizsardzības process, a legal protection and restructuring procedure designed to give it breathing space while it negotiates with the state and other creditors. According to the company and its parent, Amber Beverage Group, everyday operations continue, the wider group is not in insolvency, and this is about buying time to fix the balance sheet.

If you read Latvian media, though, you’ll see a harsher version: journalists point to years of aggressive group financing, including loans and transfers from the profitable Latvian producer to other companies in the billionaire Russian owner Yuri Shefler’s network, as the reason there wasn’t enough left in the pot when the taxman came knocking. In other words, the national drink’s modern history is not just about awards and export markets; it’s also about how far you can stretch a balance sheet before it bites back.

And that, in a way, brings us neatly to the modern legends surrounding Black Balsam: an empress and secret recipes, a billionaire, a lawsuit, and the strange role of a Latvian drink in Russia’s own political dramas.

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Legends, lore & the secret recipe

Catherine the Great

Every national drink needs a legend, and Black Balsam has a good one. The story goes that Empress Catherine the Great, on her way back to Russia, stopped in Rīga for a few days. She fell gravely ill. Her personal physician was helpless. Apothecary Kunze was summoned, administered his balsam, and — so the tale runs — the Empress was cured. As a reward, she granted Kunze the exclusive right to produce the balsam for the next fifty years, and the drink's reputation spread across Europe.

Is it true? Probably embellished. The Latvian embassy in the US placed the visit in 1764 and said the empress had a cold rather than a life-threatening illness. Whether she was dying or merely sniffling, the legend did its job by turning a local remedy into an imperial one.

The Head Liquor Master and his two apprentices

Here is the piece of folklore you most often hear in a Rīga bar. According to tradition, only the Head Liquor Master and two of his apprentices know the exact recipe. The official site puts it similarly: only two people in the world, the master distiller and his apprentice, know all the details of the single-barrel process.

It is part trade secret, part ritual. This is why, when the Germans left in 1939, the recipe genuinely could have disappeared; the knowledge lived in a handful of heads, not in a filing cabinet. There is something deeply Latvian about this: a small country's treasure, guarded by a small circle, almost lost, painstakingly recovered.

24 ingredients, 17 botanicals

What we do know is that Black Balsam is made from 24 natural ingredients, 17 of which are botanicals. These include common herbs such as wormwood, valerian, ginger, and black pepper, as well as rarer ones like gentian and Peruvian balsamic oil, alongside honey, caramel, and natural juices. No artificial colours or flavours.

The crafting uses a single-barrel infusion process: botanicals are steeped in a spirit-and-water mix to extract the "Black Balsam essence", which is then blended with the other ingredients and poured into those famous clay bottles.

Yuri Shefler

And then there’s the 21st‑century twist. Riga Black Balsam is now part of Amber Beverage Group, a Luxembourg‑based spirits company that owns almost 90 percent of Latvijas Balzams, the Rīga producer. The man behind that group is Yuri Shefler, a Russian‑born billionaire better known in the West for the Stoli vodka brand. In Russia, however, Shefler is not exactly in favour. Russian authorities have labelled him and his companies ‘extremist’, placed him on their domestic list of terrorists and extremists, and moved to seize distilleries and other assets linked to his groups. In Latvia, decisions taken under his ownership, from large loans to related companies to the way cash flowed out of Rīga, are now part of the reason Amber Latvijas balzams is in a court‑supervised legal protection process over tens of millions in unpaid Latvian taxes. So the financial folklore around Black Balsam is still being written, in courtrooms as much as in cocktail bars.

A final small aside: The Founding Fathers?

One more bit of lore worth a smile: the Latvian embassy in Washington has claimed that even the Founding Fathers of America were partial to Latvian balzams. Verify that at your own risk. But it gives you a sense of how far this story likes to travel.

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The range today and how to try it

If you walk into a Latvian shop today, whether it is a Rimi, a Maxima, or one of the Latvijas Balzams shops, you will not see a single bottle. You will see a family. The core range consists of:

Riga Black Balsam Original is the original version of the herbal bitter, combining 24 ingredients. It is described as smooth yet bitter. 45% ABV

Riga Black Balsam Currant, the original bitter, enriched with Nordic blackcurrant juice. Described as a harmony of sweet and sour flavours with a mature berry aroma. 30% ABV

Riga Black Balsam Cherry, launched in 2022 for international markets, especially the US and UK. Combines the original bitter with cherry juice to balance sweetness and bitterness. Described as having underlying notes of cherry, cherry stones and leaves, with ginger adding freshness. 30% ABV

Riga Black Balsam Tropical, the original essence with intense and refreshing tropical fruit flavours. Described as a perfect harmony of sweetness and tartness from orange and pineapple. 30% ABV.

Bottle sizes in Latvia range from a miniature 40 ml to a full litre, with a 0.5 L bottle usually priced around 12 euros.

How to drink it?

The traditionalists will tell you: sip the original cold and neat, in small shots without a snack, so you actually taste it. But Black Balsam has always been as much a mixer as a medicine. Classic serves include:

-  A teaspoon stirred into black coffee, arguably a distinctly Latvian touch.

-  Warmed with blackcurrant juice on a cold evening.

-  Poured over ice with cola or tonic for a simple long drink.

-  In cocktails such as "Black Magic", mixed with gin and vermouth, or layered over cranberry juice.

-  I have been offered it many times, poured over vanilla ice cream.

The Currant variant is particularly forgiving for newcomers. It is the one to try first, served simply on the rocks.

Where can it be bought in Latvia and other countries?

In Latvia, it is everywhere. Supermarkets, specialist liquor shops such as Latvijas Balzams veikali, airport duty-free, and the brand's own experience shop in Rīga's Old Town.

The brand is also exported to 35+ countries. For UK listeners, Master of Malt stocks it online. We used to buy it on Amazon UK. Latvijas Balzams lists other export markets, including the USA, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Brazil, China and many more. And of course, if you visit Rīga, buy it here or at the airport. It is cheaper, the range is wider, and the clay bottle makes a rather fine souvenir.

If you fancy a taste, without buying a full bottle, try the Riga Black Magic bar in the middle of Rīga's old town, on Kaļķu iela 10. A very cosy place that serves a reasonably priced tasting of the Balsam range in small glasses; or try a Balsam cocktail, or a Balsam dessert.

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A tasting in Rīga 

It's Sunday evening in Riga. On the table in front of us, we have the original Black Balm, the Currant, the Cherry and the Tropical. Four glasses and some snacks. Around the table, four friends. Three Latvians, one who recently acquired his citizenship and one Englishman, me. Two women and two men. A nice mix for the tasting. 

Round one. The original. Lift your glass. What do you get before you taste? The smell, the aroma. 

Syrupy and slightly medicinal. Medicine. 

Down the hatch and first sip, neat, at room temperature. What do you taste? What are the notes? I see some sour faces around the table. 

It's sour, it's quite sharp and bitter. Yeah, I get a very bitter ending to it. It's not rounded; it doesn't roll down the hatch nicely. It struggles in your mouth a little bit. 

I can say that it can be good medicine if you have a cold or something. 

Overall, I would not enjoy drinking this. Yeah, not my taste. In a coffee? Maybe. Not the favourite or number one. 

Round two. Currant. And Currant is 30%. So, a bit less than the one we just had. 

Smells nice. It's got a nice smell. The smell is quite good. Currant is very alive in the smell. It's much more pleasant to drink. 

Does the berry overwhelm it or it just adds to it? 

I don't think it overwhelms it. I think it improves the original one, that's for sure. 

Round three. Cherry. Cherry was launched with the UK and US in mind. Does it taste like a drink designed for export? 

Very cherry smell. And sweet. The blackcurrant has much more personality. This one doesn't have a spirit. It doesn't have a character. The blackcurrant has a character. I'm tasting the sweetness overpowering the cherry. This makes me think when you cook something nice, when all the ingredients blend into one good flavour, right? And then you have some other dishes where you can kind of taste the different elements, and they don't taste as good. For me, this is the Cherry one. You can taste the balm, and you can taste the cherry separately. But they're not coming together. And the sweetness also. 

It's quite sweet. You can drink maybe one glass, and it's enough, because it's sugary. Sweetness perfectly served as a cocktail. Nice. 

And round four, the last one. Tropical. The question is, does this Tropical make you think of the Caribbean? 

I was born in a tropical country. But what I smell is orange peel. This zesty smell. Pineapple maybe. I quite liked it. It's second best to blackcurrant. 

And I think it would go very well in a cocktail. With some juice or other things to lighten it out. Maybe a bit of fruit, pineapple or something thrown in. I think this is a real cocktail drink. 

I agree. And it doesn't taste bad. It doesn't taste like the Original. Or the Cherry, which was just too strong a cherry flavour. It's second best to the Currant. This is actually nice. It's fruity. You can taste the orange or lime zest. You can taste the pineapple. It's not bad. 

So a quick round the table. Which is your favourite of the four drinks? 

I would go in this order. Currant, Tropical, Cherry and way down there, the Original. 

My order is the same. 

Blackcurrant, Tropical. Cherry and the original. 

Having the last word as the host, I agree. The Currant was really nice. I could imagine drinking it. I actually rather like the Tropical. But I think I would put that in a cocktail. But no. Not the Cherry. No. Not the Original. 

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The story of Latvia’s national drink

270 years. A lost recipe. An empress, maybe. A clay bottle that keeps working on the liquid inside it for months after it's sealed. And tonight, a few friends around a table in Rīga, deciding what they think.

For me, Black Balsam is more than a drink. It is a small, dark, bitter archive of this country: the apothecaries, the Hanseatic traders, the German craftsmen who left, the Latvians who rebuilt what they left behind, and the bartenders who ship clay bottles to New York and London today.

If you've never tried it, go and find a bottle. If you have one, pour it tonight and think of Rīga.

Uz veselību. To your health. Please drink responsibly.

[Image by An Englishman in Latvia. Music by MickeysCat from Pixabay]