Skriveri Milk Toffee

Gotina, the little cow, is a soft milk toffee made at Skriveri since 1962 from cream, sugar and butter, cut into small blocks and wrapped in paper printed with a cow, and it is one of the few Latvian food products that everyone in the country recognises on sight. The factory in the town has kept making them through changes of ownership and the recipe has stayed essentially the same, with variations in flavour added over the years. Factory visits with tastings can be arranged. Skriveri also has a dendrological park laid out in the nineteenth century by Maximilian von Sievers with a large collection of trees, which is the other reason to stop.

What you actually see

• The toffee factory - the works where Gotina are made, visited by arrangement.
• The wrapper - the cow-printed paper the sweets are known by.
• The dendrological park - the nineteenth-century tree collection.
• Tastings - the samples offered on factory visits.

When to go

Year round; factory visits need arranging in advance rather than turning up. The park is best from May to October. Weekdays are when the factory works.

Honest expectations

Factory visits are by arrangement only and not always available. The sweets are sold everywhere in the country, so the factory is not needed to try them. The town is small with limited facilities.

Nearby

Koknese lies east; Aizkraukle is southeast.