The original snap and the hiss
You can’t have fish and chips without a can of dandelion and burdock. You know that, right? And you can’t have a British childhood without chugging Shandy Bass and pretending you’re pissed.
Fizzy pop is everywhere, all around us all the time. It sponsors some of the largest events in the world, and covers our Anthropocene landscape in branded marketing. Go to the top of Everest, there will be a can of coke. I truly believe that there will be a bidding war between Red Bull, Monster, and Rockstar to become the first item of litter on the Mars human habitat.
When I started tasting wine to revise for my WSET L2 exam, I spent a lot of time tasting Diet Coke to try, once and for all, to figure out what it tastes of. It’s not something anyone really asks questions about. We just drink Coca Cola and it tastes like Coca Cola. Cinnamon is what I get from it. Vanilla and cinnamon, and other woody spices, and maybe some weak botanicals. I prefer Diet Coke to regular Coke (and I hate when it’s called “full fat coke” for some reason,
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makes me think of scummy bits of oil on the top of a washing up bowl) because regular Coke is so overwhelmingly cloying. The idea of the drink, it seems, is to get as much sugar down you as possible without it coming back up again. I was told once that’s why it’s also acidic. I’m not sure if that’s true. To tell you the truth, I actually prefer Pepsi Max above all. A definite hangover from being a 90s child and saving up tokens and pink ring pulls to send off for exclusive Spice Girls single “Move Over (Generation Next).”
Fizzy drinks as we know them today are almost completely unrecognisable from the tonics and beverages they mutated from. Coca Cola itself was invented in 1886 during a boom-time for wellness tonics in the USA, it’s high sugar content and other no-longer-legal ingredients offering vitality, strong nerves, and as a cure for headaches. It was initially alcoholic, but became a soft drink during prohibition—useful for clandestine drinkers who needed something sweet and palatable to mix their bootlegged whiskey with.
Before Coke became a global monolith, pop in the US was drinks like ginger beer, root beer, and sarsaparilla, which could be made at home with roots and ingredients from the garden, such as birch bark and sap, liquorice, dandelion roots, spruce, and spices like allspice, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon. The most realistic and widely-available ancestor of these original recipes is Dr. Pepper—its name offering, once again, a look at a time when fizzy pop was seen as a tasty way to keep fit. Then, in the 1960s, the the United States Food and Drug Administration banned the use of sassafras due to a chemical called “saffrol” being present, which when used in extremely high doses can be carcinogenic. “Nutmeg, cinnamon, and basil also contain safrole, but that was not an issue,” notes the American Homebrewers’ Association rather sardonically. During the 1950s, Coke has become something of a fashion statement—now, it was the norm.
In the UK, we had a similar trajectory for our own pop. Vimto, Irn Bru, Tizer, Lucozade, and even Dandelion and Burdock are all drinks that were once energy-giving tonics or alcohol-free alternatives for hard working people. Vimto is just a shortened version of it’s original name “Vim Tonic”, and it was invented by a Blackburn-born herb and spice merchant to make the most of the Temperance movement. Tizer was an alcohol-free aperitif invented in the 1920s in Manchester. Lucozade was invented by a pharmacist in Newcastle as a glucose-rich energy drink for the sick—which is why there is a deep generational need for original, glass bottle, red Lucozade when you’re relegated to your sick bed. Mysterious, orange Irn Bru outsells Coca Cola in Scotland every single year, and nobody really knows what’s in it or what it tastes like. Dandelion and Burdock has been drank in Britain since Medieval times, but the first carbonated and commercially-available bottled version was made by Shaws of Huddersfield in 1871. It’s probably the closest thing we have in the UK to sarsaparilla.
One of the only things I miss about living in a city is the ludicrous amount of choice in every paper shop. I miss KA Black Cherry, and non-standard Fanta flavours, and bottles of off-brand Red Kola. After school I loved a bottle of Moray Cup—I’m pretty sure it was supposed to taste like Pimms or Sangria and I think it was only really available in Aberdeen—and blue Panda Pops were the true enemy of the state. The only drink I ever wanted on a Saturday after dance class. The sugar tax has changed the landscape of fizzy drinks in this country, forcing recipes to change and drinks companies to discontinue flavours, but my memories will remain. Hurray for sickly sweet Barr’s Pineapple. May you hang on to your niche corner of the market for as long as I’m alive.