Ribelmais
An old white-beige maize from the Rhine valley, from St. Gallen to the Grisons, ground into semolina. It is used to make ribel, a semolina left to swell for hours in milk and water, then roasted in butter until it forms small golden lumps.
One autumn evening in the St. Gallen Rhine valley, cobs are stripped of their husks, leaving just two or four to tie them together and hang them in the loft. This “Türgga-Usschella” once set the rhythm of the year; municipalities and clubs bring it back to life every autumn.
Origin
Having come from America, maize is said to have reached the valley by way of Turkey, hence its name “Türggen”. According to the Rheintaler Ribelmais association, its first mention dates from 1650, in Balgach. The valley’s humid heat hindered other cereals: around 1850, according to Culinary Heritage of Switzerland, maize covered two thirds of the cultivated land. After the Second World War, more profitable fodder maize supplanted it; in 1997, only four hectares remained. The association, founded the following year, relaunched its cultivation.
Growing
Its specification describes it as an old local variety, which pollinates freely from one plant to another and has retained great genetic diversity. It is sown before mid-May, seven plants per square metre at most, and harvested from mid-September to early November. Dried then ground, the kernels give semolina, fine meal and flour, white verging on beige. The germ stays in the grind, whereas it is removed from most maize to extract the oil.
At the table
Ribelmais owes its name to a dish: ribel. In dialect, “rible” describes the gesture of crumbling the mass in the pan. The semolina is doused with boiling salted milk and water, left to swell for three to six hours, then roasted for about twenty minutes, with the butter added little by little, until it forms small golden crumbs. It is eaten slightly sweetened, dipped in milky coffee, with apple or plum compote.
Today
Rheintaler Ribel has been an AOP since 2000. It is grown, milled and packed in an area that follows the Rhine: the St. Gallen valley as far as Sargans, some twenty municipalities in the Grisons and Liechtenstein. It is sold finely ground (“Original”) or coarsely ground (“Bramata”). Since the relaunch, the area under cultivation has grown more than fifteenfold.
Sources: Culinary Heritage of Switzerland, entry “Rheintaler Ribelmais (AOP)”; Swiss PDO-PGI Association, factsheet “Rheintaler Ribelmais AOP”; Federal Office for Agriculture, specification for Rheintaler Ribel (2025); Rheintaler Ribelmais association, pages “Geschichte”, “Verein” and “Biodiversität”, recipe “Rheintaler Ribel original”.