Farmers in the Emmental and a new kind of apple juice.

Ramseier takes its name from Ramsei, a village in the Emmental, in the canton of Bern. There, in 1910, the Emmentalische Obstweingenossenschaft Ramsei — the Emmental fruit-wine cooperative of Ramsei — was founded to make and sell fruit drinks, according to the Swiss Archives of Agricultural History. The company says the cooperative had eight founding members and that its first product was an alcoholic cider.

The brand’s next step was a non-alcoholic one. The company says that in 1912 the cooperative developed a process for making alcohol-free cider, or Süssmost, that would keep, and it counts this as the start of Ramseier’s reputation for sweet apple juice. At the Swiss National Exhibition in Bern in 1914 its juice won two gold medals, the company says, and that year it opened its first depot in the city. During the First World War, it adds, supplying soldiers’ canteens made the name known across the country, and during the Second World War, with sugar rationed, demand for its fruit concentrates brought what the company calls its great breakthrough. In its history of the Ramseier brand, German Wikipedia says Switzerland’s first plant for making apple-juice concentrate went into operation in 1934.

The cooperative did not stay alone. In 1977 it joined three other Bernese cider mills, in Kiesen, Münsingen and Herzogenbuchsee, to set up Pomdor AG, which coordinated the sale of their products, the Archives of Agricultural History say. German Wikipedia, citing a 2015 history published by fenaco, says the Bernese farm-cooperative federation in Herzogenbuchsee held 51% as the main shareholder. The Ramsei cooperative itself voted in 1997 to dissolve with effect from the start of 1998.

Pomdor, Granador, Unidrink and fenaco.

The company behind Ramseier today was assembled through a chain of mergers. Pomdor grew by taking in other cider mills, German Wikipedia says, including the Bernese large-scale cider mill in Worb, which it bought in 1991 and closed at the end of 1995. In 1993 six regional farm-cooperative federations merged to form fenaco, the agricultural cooperative group whose best-known names also include Landi and Volg; by 2005 Pomdor belonged to fenaco, German Wikipedia says.

In 2005 Pomdor merged with Granador AG, a publicly held drinks maker from Hitzkirch in the canton of Lucerne, to form Unidrink AG, the Bern newspaper Der Bund reported in February that year. German Wikipedia says Granador had its own roots in a Lucerne fruit-processing cooperative founded in Richensee and Hitzkirch in 1902 by Franz Moser-Schär. In 2008 Unidrink renamed itself Ramseier Suisse AG, after its best-known brand, and moved its seat from Hitzkirch to Oberkirch, near Sursee, according to a company press release of March 2008 and the Archives of Agricultural History.

Production has been concentrated since. German Wikipedia records the closure of cider mills in Sulgen and Wittenbach, decided in 2007, and in Kiesen in 2017, and says the company now presses apples in Sursee and in Oberaach, in Thurgau, through Ramseier Aachtal AG, in which it holds 72%. A logistics centre with a high-bay warehouse opened in Sursee in 2013, Swiss public broadcaster SRF reported. In its 2025 results, published in March 2026, the company said it processed about 35,000 tonnes of cider apples that year at two sites, and named its bottling plants as Sursee, Hochdorf and Elm.

The group also holds two other Swiss drinks brands. Pomdor bought the Swiss rights to Sinalco from Feldschlösschen in 2002, according to a Feldschlösschen press release of June that year, and in 1999 bought Mineralquellen Elm AG, maker of Elmer Citro, from the same brewer; Mineralquellen Elm was merged into Ramseier Suisse in 2016, German Wikipedia says.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make food or drink, and all of them come from Switzerland or Norway: Villars, Maestrani, Ramseier, Appenzeller Alpenbitter, Elmer Citro, Ringnes and Tine. Food and drink brands from these two countries in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s surname to co-operatives and names that now belong to much larger groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a village shop to a supermarket shelf.

A food or drink brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the taste it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Medals on the label, a swing top and a slogan for every decade.

The company’s own history treats the label as a record of prizes. It says a new bottle label of 1920 showed the awards Ramseier had won in Zurich in 1912, Bern in 1914 and Lucerne in 1920, and that further distinctions were added to its labels between 1920 and 1960. In 1987, it says, Ramseier brought back the swing-top closure for its Suure Moscht, a cider, and the swing top became the brand’s signature bottle. On its own site the company writes the name in capitals, as RAMSEIER.

Advertising has moved through a series of slogans, all dated by the company. Around 1990 it called its juice “Der Saft der Säfte,” the juice of juices, and ran a campaign built on the line “Ramseier gibt rote Ohren” — Ramseier gives you red ears — with the comedian Frank Baumann. A campaign of about 2000 used the dialect line “Aus hät’s se geng scho gäh” and cast the brand as apple experts; the company says apple spritzers became bestsellers in that period. In 2008 it adopted the slogan “Die Kraft der Natur,” the power of nature.

The range has widened around the apple. The company dates cloudy cider in cans and Ramseier Hochstämmer, a line meant to support traditional tall-trunk orchards, to 2013; a renovated cider mill to 2015; the light drinks Zisch and Huus-Tee to 2017; and Milde Moscht, blended from 30 Swiss apple varieties, to 2020, the year it opened a visitor centre, the Ramseier Erlebniswelt. In its March 2026 results release it announced a modernised design for the brand, rolled out in 2026 with a campaign called “Ganz ehrlich,” or “quite honestly,” launched in May.

For a design guide, Ramseier shows how a village name, a row of medals and a swing-top bottle can carry a farmers’ cooperative brand from 1910 into a national drinks group. Compare Elmer Citro, the Glarus lemon drink now made by the same company, and Hero, the Lenzburg fruit-preserves brand. For this guide we use cider red, an orchard green and a must amber with a sturdy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Ramseier’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.