You may be a fan of the classic Kiwiana beverage Lemon & Paeroa, but did you know it wasn't the first lemon soda created in the Waikato?
Lemon & Te Aroha - made with mineral-rich water from the spa town of Te Aroha - appeared 19 years before Lemon & Paeroa but disappeared into its shadow in the early 1970s. Now, 50 years on, L&T is coming back to market.
Photo: Te Aroha & District Museum Society / Nancy Swarbrick, 'Waikato places - Te Aroha', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ephemera/27337/lemon-and-te-aroha-label (accessed 30 June 2022)
In the 1880s, when Lemon & Te Aroha was created, Te Aroha was a famous geothermal spa town with thousands of people visited each year for the curative properties of its water.
In 1972, the town's signature lemon drink disappeared when Lemon & Te Aroha was bought by Oasis Industries, which acquired Lemon & Paeroa at the same time.
For reasons unknown, but possibly related to water supply, Oasis soon shut down Lemon & Te Aroha and put its money behind Lemon & Paeroa, which is now owned by Coca-Cola Ltd.
Yet like many in Te Aroha, Richard Revell never forgot the local fizzy drink he enjoyed as a child.
For the last four years, he has been developing an updated Lemon & Te Aroha containing just organic sugar, lemon (aka "natural flavours") and Te Aroha water.
What sets apart L&T is its main ingredient - water that's naturally mineral-rich and naturally fizzy, Revell says.
'We wanted to keep everything natural so we've worked on filtration systems to take the iron and the manganese out of the water without using any chemicals. We don't add any minerals to our water so this is actually natural mineral water within itself ... It's the uniqueness of the Te Aroha water [that makes it different to L&P]."
