A Chur brewer, a cantonal merger and a mountain’s name.

Calanda is the beer brewed in Chur, in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. The company dates its beginnings to 1780, when, it says, the Graubünden brewer Rageth Mathis opened a small house brewery in the Welschdörfli, a quarter of Chur. Heineken Switzerland, which owns the brand today, gives the same founding story on its own history page, adding that more than 260 breweries were then at work in Switzerland.

The modern company took shape through mergers. The Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), in an article by Max Hilfiker, says the Rhätische Aktienbrauereien were formed in 1902 from the merger of two Chur breweries and gradually took over all the independent breweries of Graubünden; the company says Mathis’s brewery joined the Aktienbrauerei Chur in 1902 and that the resulting group had breweries from Thusis to Davos. In 1971, the HLS says, the group took the new name Calanda Bräu; the company describes it as the merger of the Engadiner Aktienbrauerei and the Rhätische Getränke AG. The HLS adds that the brewery had moved into soft drinks with the Rätia Getränke AG in 1953.

Next came a partner from the lowlands. The HLS dates the partial merger with Brauerei Haldengut of Winterthur, which created the Calanda Haldengut group, to 1989; Calanda and Heineken Switzerland give the year as 1990. Heineken Switzerland says the Dutch brewer took a majority of Haldengut and Calanda Bräu in 1993 and that both became wholly owned Heineken subsidiaries in 1999, when the Chur site was expanded to brew Heineken beer locally. The HLS says Calanda Haldengut had come to belong almost entirely to Heineken and was no longer listed on the stock exchange. In 2001, Heineken Switzerland says, the business was renamed Heineken Switzerland AG.

A mountain, a lager and a family of Radlers.

The name is a landscape. English Wikipedia explains Calanda Bräu as “Calanda Brew,” after the Calanda, a 2,805-metre mountain of the Glarus Alps on the border of Graubünden and St. Gallen. The brand leans on that setting in its own words: its website says Calanda needs only four things, brewing barley, hops, yeast and water, “natürlich von hier, aus den Bündner Bergen,” and Heineken Switzerland describes the mountain landscape of Graubünden as the brand’s home. The site closes its pages with the greeting “Viva!”, and its tour page signs off “Viva Calanda!”

The core beer has a long name of its own. The company lists Calanda Edelbräu under 1980 in its timeline, and German Wikipedia, citing the Swiss trademark register, says the name was registered as a mark in 1980. Another long-running beer, the stronger Meisterbräu, was taken off the market in 2013 after about 40 years, German Wikipedia says, citing the Südostschweiz newspaper of January 2013.

Since then the range has grown sideways. The company says Calanda Radler, beer mixed with fruit juice, was introduced in 2013; Heineken Switzerland lists Calanda Glatsch as a 2017 launch, Calanda Tandem as a 2019 one and Radler Grapefruit in alcohol-free and 2.0 versions as a 2022 one. The current site lists Calanda Original, Edelbräu, Glatsch, several alcohol-free Radlers and an alcohol-free product called VITA.

The look has been reworked too. Heineken Switzerland says that in 2020 both Eichhof and Calanda were given a refresh through a new design. The calanda.com imprint credits the concept and design of the website to Publicis Switzerland in Zurich.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are Austrian and Swiss beers: Puntigamer, Schremser and Murauer from Austria, and Feldschlösschen, Calanda, Appenzeller Bier and Eichhof from Switzerland. Their ownership runs from global brewing groups to families and a cooperative. German Wikipedia records that Puntigamer’s Graz brewery is part of Brau Union Österreich, which Heineken has owned since 2003; that Heineken has owned Calanda in Chur since 1993 and Eichhof in Lucerne since 2008; and that Carlsberg has owned Feldschlösschen in Rheinfelden since 2000.

The others are independent. German Wikipedia says the Brauerei Schrems in the Waldviertel has belonged to the Trojan family since the nineteenth century, that the Brauerei Murau in Styria has been a cooperative since 1910, and that both were among the founding members of an association of Austria’s independent private breweries in 2021. Appenzeller Bier is made by the Brauerei Locher in Appenzell, a family company; the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says Johann Christoph Locher began brewing beer in Appenzell in 1886.

A beer brand’s identity is usually carried by a label, a crest or an emblem and the town it names, because the company behind it may have changed hands or moved some of its production elsewhere. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the brewery says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and bottled and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A regional brewery inside a global group.

Under Heineken, Chur became a production centre for more than one brand. English Wikipedia, citing a 2009 study of post-acquisition brand management by Sebastian Dieng, Christoph Dörrenbächer and Jens Gammelgaard, says Heineken moved the brewing of Haldengut beer to Chur after the merger and closed the Winterthur brewery. From 2013, English Wikipedia says, citing the Südostschweiz, the Chur brewery also bottled beer from the Heineken-owned Eichhof brewery of Lucerne, which arrives by train; Eichhof Getränke AG became part of Heineken in 2008, Heineken Switzerland says. The news site nau.ch reported in May 2022, following the SonntagsZeitung, that Heineken brews the Italian brand Birra Moretti in Chur, together with Sagres and Desperados. Heineken Switzerland says all its main beer brands sold in the country are brewed and bottled in its own breweries in Chur and Lucerne.

Calanda has also brewed for others. German Wikipedia, citing the Nidwaldner Tagblatt of November 1988, says the retailer Coop launched its own “Tell” beer that month, made by Calanda Bräu and by the brewery Bière du Boxer, and that Calanda brewed Coop’s budget Prix-Garantie beer until 2013.

The name needs care online. Calanda is first of all a mountain, with a mountain hut of the same name, and the beer brand’s own site is calanda.com, run in the name of Brauerei Calanda AG in Chur.

For a design guide, Calanda shows how a regional beer can keep a mountain’s name and a city’s founding date at the centre of its identity while the company behind it changes hands, merges and becomes part of an international group. Compare it with Eichhof, its Lucerne sibling, and Birra Moretti, brewed under the same roof. For this guide we use Calanda blue, glacier white and Graubünden red with a bold grotesque sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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