So that Mineralwasser I talked about yesterday turns out to be an important “mixer” in all kinds of drinks here. Back at the beginning of my German class, one of the first vocabulary lists included words for common fruits, such as

Orange “orange”
Apfel “apple”

At the same time, the teachers added two more words for related beverages they thought we should know:

Orangesaft “orange juice”
Apfelschorle “sparkling apple juice”

Now, you may suspect that the second set of words are compounds based on the first set. So, given the word Orangesaft, you might predict that Saft by itself just means “juice”.

Well, you’d be correct. You can use Saft to refer to the juice of any kind of fruit or vegetable. After orange and apple, a really popular type of juice — particularly with another member of my household, in fact — is rhubarb juice, called Rhabarbersaft. I don’t think I’d ever seen that for sale in a regular supermarket in the U.S. years ago. Is it common there now? It is here. I should note that the Rhabarbersaft that we buy in cartons in the grocery store is (necessarily?) sweetened with sugar.

Anyway,  if Saft means juice, what about Schorle? Now, in the U.S., I remember drinking sparkling apple cider, which was a carbonated version of apple cider. So, when I first learned about the Apfelschorle drink, I figured that it was the same kind of drink. Which it is. Well, sort of.

Except, it’s not exactly the same because the fizzy part of the Apfelschorle comes not from adding just carbonation into the juice, but rather from adding sparkling water, i.e. Mineralwasser to the apple juice. I.e., if you want to get fizz in your apple juice, you add Mineralwasser.

In general, a Schorle is a drink made by adding Mineralwasser to something. So, an Apfelschorle is Apfelsaft mixed with Mineralwasser. Likewise, a Rhabarberschorle is Rhabarbersaft mixed with Mineralwasser. And so on.

There also is a Schorle that is a type of wine (Wein) drink. Yes, you guessed, it’s called a Weinschorle, which combines wine (usually white wine) with Mineralwasser. In some places, you can also order a fruit flavored Weinschorle: e.g. pear, peach, apple, etc., which combines the juice, the wine and the Mineralwasser.

I remember that when I was in college, my roommate and I used to occasionally splurge on a 4-pack of bottled wine coolers that were the same idea. So the idea of mixing wine, fruit juice and sparkling water is hardly a new one. But I’m having trouble getting tempted by the idea these days. What you get in a Schorle is a drink that’s a watered down whatever from whatever you started with.

Of course, here in Germany, the wine is not exactly at the same level of the great stuff we were spoiled with in Italy. A couple of weeks ago, we wound up buying some rather mundane white wine. So I thought perhaps making it into one of these Schorle things might make it more palatable. I added some sparkling water to a glass of white wine and, presto! It was now a Weinschorle. Which tasted like a watered down version of that not-great white wine. Not an improvement.

Hmm, how about making into a fruit Schorle? Since we had some Rhabarbersaft on hand, I added some of that to my Weinschorle. Presto: it was now a Rhabarbersaftschorle. Which also wasn’t a particular improvement. Now it tasted like a watered down version of not-great white wine, with a bit of too-sweet juice and some little hints of fizzy water.

Ah well. I guess when it comes to flavored drinks I’m a purist: I like the flavor of a good white wine and the fizziness of Mineralwasser, each on their own merits. I probably drink more plain water (sparkling and un) than anything else, actually, so I guess I’m not the target market for the Schorle drinks.

But occasionally I do want a something non-alcoholic that has some flavor in it. On those occasions, I will turn to a soda that’s particular to Germany. Tomorrow we’ll explore that side of drinking in Germany.