Wild Mountain Cranberries from the Carpathians

Every day dur­ing the sum­mer, Maria gets up at 6 am, picks up her berry comb and goes out to the Carpathian Moun­tains to pick wild moun­tain cran­ber­ries. She does­n’t need an alarm clock – her in­ner clock ticks in time with na­ture, and she can rely on it fully, she says.

“This is my home here. No other mead­ows or woods have such an in­tense scent: the moss, the trees, the soil. I don’t think you’ll find such views any­where else in the world.”

Maria has never left her home re­gion, nor has she any in­ten­tion of ever do­ing so. “I’ve got every­thing I need here to be happy,” she says proudly. The Carpathian Moun­tains, one of Eu­rope’s most beau­ti­ful land­scapes, are sit­u­ated in the heart of Ro­ma­nia. It’s the largest con­tin­u­ous for­est area on the con­ti­nent of Eu­rope, and boasts high moun­tains, wide val­leys and lush mead­ows. This is where the moun­tain cran­ber­ries for Biot­tas Wild Moun­tain Cran­berry juice­grow wild on sunny slopes and in dense forests. The en­tire area is cer­ti­fied or­ganic. Na­ture is trusted here, and is al­lowed to run her course. Fer­tilis­ers and pes­ti­cides are com­pletely taboo. The re­gion is so ex­ten­sive that it would be im­pos­si­ble to cul­ti­vate it all sys­tem­at­i­cally. And that’s what makes it so ideal. You leave na­ture to her­self – and are de­lighted when you can reap a good har­vest.

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Har­vest time is from Au­gust to Sep­tem­ber. The small berries are har­vested us­ing wooden berry combs and then sorted by hand. This method is gen­tle on the berries and guar­an­tees pre­mium qual­ity. For many fam­i­lies here, har­vest time is a re­li­able op­por­tu­nity to in­crease their in­come. And they’re proud of the fact that peo­ple all around the world en­joy the juice made from their berries. They’ve heard of Switzer­land – and that the moun­tains there are even higher than their own.

Clemens Rüt­ti­mann, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Biotta, vis­ited the farm­ers dur­ing their har­vest to find out more about their way of life and how much the berries mean to them.

“It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see how im­por­tant har­vest time is here. I’m par­tic­u­larly proud of the fact that we’re able to con­tribute to this in small mea­sure,” re­ports Rüt­ti­mann. “We are able in this way to pro­tect and sup­port an en­tire re­gion whose bio­di­ver­sity is vir­tu­ally un­matched and which is home so many peo­ple.” For Biot­ta’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, it was like en­ter­ing a new world, far away from the hec­tic of­fice rou­tine. Only the land­scape re­minded him “just a lit­tle of Ap­pen­zell”.

The berries are brought to col­lec­tion points, where they’re checked, weighed and paid for di­rectly. They are then frozen and brought to South Ty­rol via lorry, where the berries are gen­tly pressed to re­lease their nat­ural juices. Im­me­di­ately af­ter this, the juice is brought to the pro­duc­tion site at Täger­wilen (TG). Once it ar­rives here, it’s blended with tea ex­tract and a lit­tle agave syrup, and filled into Biotta bot­tles. All the good­ness of na­ture in a bot­tle.