10 Lesser-Known Sodas Our Taste Buds Will Never Forget
Sugar junkies (read: us) were rocked this week by news that a new soda tax might force Mexican Coke to revise its recipe, swapping tasty cane sugar for, um, high-fructose corn syrup. Thankfully, it's since come to light that the recipe will remain unchanged for exports to the U.S., but as you can imagine, the mere prospect left us distraught. We cried. Then we hugged one another and tried to convince ourselves that no matter how bad things seemed, everything was going to be okay. Then we cried some more. Finally, to part the clouds of our misery, we shared our sweetest soda memories.
Whether they're discontinued also-rans, hard-to-find regional favorites, or just unsung classics, these are the sodas that have sugared our hearts—perhaps clogging our arteries in the process, but hey, the course of true love never did run smooth, as the Bard had it. And while we're quoting Shakespeare: a soda by any other name would still taste as sweet. Or something like that.
1/10Nehi
Boasting more than 20 flavors, including "blue ice cream," Nehi—pronounced "knee high"—is a plucky but elusive line of sodas owned by Royal Crown. (More on them later.) BonAppetit.com editor Matt Gross has been pursued by Nehi into strange and distant lands: "I went to high school in Williamsburg, Va., and Nehi sodas were always around. They were the sodas you got if you only had 55 cents in your pocket instead of 75 cents. They're not good. They taste artificial. Orange, grape, cola, whatever—when you're a teenager, as long as it's sugary and fizzy, you don't care that much. But what fixed them in my mind was this: after college, in 1996, I was teaching English in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, at a paint company. There would be a break in the middle of the class, and during the break my students would often bring me something to drink; sometimes it was Vietnamese iced coffee, sometimes it was soy milk. One day they produced, from I don't know where, a bottle—an actual glass bottle—of grape Nehi soda. And it tasted just as terrible as it always had."
2/10Moxie
Moxie might be the only soda ever to land in the dictionary. (Moxie: full of determination, character, and nerve.) It was created in New Hampshire and remains a favorite in New England; deputy editor Scott DeSimon has been a lifelong devotee: "I grew up in Maine. My grandfather preferred the diet Moxie because he thought it tasted more like the original formula; he thought the rejiggered formula was too sweet, which was funny, because not many people think of Moxie as too sweet. I started drinking it because I saw him drinking it when I was a little kid. I found that if I had a bottle of Moxie, no one would ask for a sip of it, because no one liked it. It's like a darker, more bitter root beer. I could have it to myself. Later, when my family came to visit me in college, they would bring me six-packs of Moxie; in the late '90s, I 'invented' a drink called the 3M, which is Maker's Mark and Moxie. I'd bring—and this is annoying—a can or small bottle of Moxie to the bar, order a Maker's Mark on the rocks, and mix it myself. It's also really good for ice-cream floats. There's a Moxie festival every year. I went to one when I was in college."
3/10Squirt
Many an East Coaster goes west to seek fame, fortune, and Squirt. Our senior food editor, Dawn Perry, remembers discovering its citrus wonders: "I didn't grow up with Squirt. An ex-boyfriend/California native had this yellow Squirt T-shirt. It was very cute. I liked the T-shirt first. Then I tried the tequila-and-Squirt-with-lime-thing and I was sold. (Is this a paloma? Couldn't be a prettier name for a cheaper drink.) To all of California's beautiful, lucky children, you have no idea how good you've had it. Because tequila and Squirt beats a rum and Coke any day."
4/10Cheerwine
We figured that Andrew Knowlton, our Foodist and Southerner-in-residence, would be brimming with anecdotes about Cheerwine, the cherry soda made and beloved by North Carolinians. He pulled a crafty bait-and-switch with a tantalizing cliffhanger: "To be honest, I came to Cheerwine rather late in my life. I was probably 20 when I first had one. If it was available in Atlanta, I wouldn't have been allowed or able to buy it; that's what happens when you grow up in the home of Coca-Cola. But I didn't necessarily grow up drinking Coke every day. Or Sprite. Or Mello Yello. There was only one Coke product allowed in my house then and to this day my parents still drink it . . ." What is it, you ask? Well, click onward!
5/10Tab
"TAB. Yes, Tab. Graphic designers love it for its packaging, but few like it for its taste, except my parents and a few very dedicated fans. If I wanted a soda as a kid I had to drink Tab. Did I like it? 'Like' is not a word I associate with Tab. It was my only choice if I wanted sugar and caffeine. No matter where my parents travel in the States—even when they visit me in Brooklyn—we always have to go hunt for Tab. You usually find it in some old bodega, on the bottom shelf, very dusty. I've resisted it all these years, but I fear one day I'll succumb to its odd appeal . . . it's in my blood, after all."
6/10Fanta
Fanta is a well-traveled soft drink; it originated in Germany and now is found everywhere from Argentina to Albania. The Bon Appétit staff couldn't decide which of its many flavors is best—the grape contingent was vocal, it must be mentioned—but we unanimously agreed that Fanta seems to taste better everywhere outside of America.
7/10RC Cola
Our managing editor, Stacey Rivera, remembers a childhood steeped in Royal Crown Cola, the Cola War's perennial, lovable underdog: "I grew up on Long Island and it was the only thing we drank in elementary school—I don't know if there was a distribution plant around, or if someone's dad worked for RC Cola, but there was just a ton of it around all the time. So much RC. I remember it being much sweeter than other colas. More like syrup, less like soda."
8/10Mug Root Beer
For executive editor, Christine Muhlke, Mug root beer is her Proustian madeleine: it conjures a very specific nostalgia. "To me, this is the flavor of afternoons in paneled rec rooms and pitchers of soda at the occasional Chuck E. Cheese birthday party (not mine)."
9/10Crystal Pepsi
Your correspondent has vivid memories of his first encounter with this oft-lampooned clear cola: at a friend's birthday party in 1993, where it was served alongside another '90s gimmick, Pizza Hut's Bigfoot pizza. While many found it perplexing or gratuitous—it tasted exactly like Pepsi, but it was, yes, crystal clear—your correspondent was crazy for it, and his reasoning at the age of seven probably went something like this: clear is cooler than brown.
10/10Ting
It took us a second to remember its name—for a while there we were referring to it as "that grapefruit Jamaican soda"—but then there it was: Ting. It's hard to find in America—there are websites devoted to importing monthly supplies of it—but those among us who have tried it were quick to praise it. Were there a Sodas of the World pageant, surely Ting would emerge wearing some kind of resplendent tiara.
