No Iftar meal is complete without his juice, says Ibrahim Al-Hamdani, the owner of the famous Raisin Juice Taha in Mosul, northern Iraq, as he carefully supervises his workers preparing the famous drink.
Before starting the long process of making the raisin juice with mint and pouring it into plastic bags so that they can be sold to customers, Hamdani told Reuters that raisin juice is omnipresent at Iftar tables in Mosul during Ramadan and indicated that demand for this drink is very strong throughout the month.
He added that those fasting want to recover the sugar that their body lost during the day.
Hamdani inherited his store from his grandfather and says little has changed in the process of making raisin juice since then. He expanded his business, and now he employs about 15 workers in the shop and several other branches in Mosul that handle distribution.
“Before I came to this world, my grandfather was making raisin juice. This means that the drinks have stayed the same for over seventy or eighty years, God knows how long,” he said.
Omar Farouk, a worker in Raisin Juice Taha, says there are between 14 to 15 families who depend on the shop to make a living.
The shop gets its supply of raisins locally, as large quantities of it come from the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan near Mosul. Hamdani says he has customers from all over Iraq.
