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kottke.org posts about beverages

The Invention of Coca-Cola, Miracle Brain Tonic

Spurred by a near death experience in the Civil War (after sustaining a saber wound to the chest) and looking for a way to manage the resultant addiction to morphine, pharmacist Dr. John Pemberton invented the drink that would become the globally famous and lucrative fizzy drink, Coca-Cola. I’d heard bits and pieces of this story over the year — it’s part of America’s consumerist mythology and therefore hard to ignore completely — but had never really had the whole thing explained to me. (via open culture)


The Racial History of Soda in America

In 2013, University of Virginia historian Grace Elizabeth Hale wrote about “the long and often fractious history of soft drinks, prohibition laws and race” for the NY Times.

Coke’s recipe wasn’t the only thing influenced by white supremacy: through the 1920s and ’30s, it studiously ignored the African-American market. Promotional material appeared in segregated locations that served both races, but rarely in those that catered to African-Americans alone.

Meanwhile Pepsi, the country’s second largest soft drink company, had tried to fight Coke by selling its sweeter product in a larger bottle for the same price. Still behind in 1940, Pepsi’s liberal chief executive, Walter S. Mack, tried a new approach: he hired a team of 12 African-American men to create a “negro markets” department.

More here at The Atlantic:

Elsewhere in the soft drink industry, though, the oversimplification of target consumers has had its questionable if not altogether offensive moments, too. Mountain Dew, for instance, originally based its entire brand around making fun of poor Appalachians, also known as hillbillies. In the late 40s and early 50s, its label featured the official Mountain Dew mascot “Willy the Hillbilly” and the slogan: “Ya-Hoo! Mountain Dew. It’ll tickle yore innards.” (The name of the soft drink, of course, refers to the Southern slang for moonshine.)

In a not-very-convincing rebuttal to Hale’s article, Coke’s “Chief Historian” argues that the company has always been America’s “most inclusive drink” and more oddly, that Coke has never contained cocaine, which Snopes handily debunked. (thx, caroline)


Distinctive waters

In the future, there will be sommeliers for everything from toothpaste to flip-flops. Today’s example: water.

Take Mahalo Deep Sea Water, at £20 for 71cl, which comes from “a freshwater iceberg that melted thousands of years ago and, being of different temperature and salinity to the sea water around it, sank to become a lake at the bottom of the ocean floor. The water has been collected through a 3000ft pipeline off the shores of Hawaii.” According to the Daily Mail, Mahalo has a “very rounded quality on the palate” and it “would be good with shellfish.”

There’s even a book on this “up-and-coming trend”: Fine Waters: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Most Distinctive Bottled Waters.

Update: The Grand Hyatt Sao Paulo has a cheese sommelier, a specially water menu, and “an extensive soap menu”.


Root beer tasting

NY Times wine guy Eric Asimov and his panel taste a bunch of root beers and conclude, among other things, that “too much root beer can make a man mean”.

Our No. 1 root beer, from Sprecher in Wisconsin, a wonderfully balanced and complex brew, uses a combination of corn syrup and honey, while our No. 2, the restrained and flavorful IBC, uses only corn syrup. So even with the importance of the sweetener, something more is at play with root beers.

I’ve always wanted to have a root beer tasting.


Suck Cola!

Greg Allen still has his bottle of Suck Cola from when the now-defunct web site Suck was handing them out at a trade show in 1996. He’s building a registry of Suck Cola bottles…if you’ve got one, send in the details.

After your Cola information is reviewed and validated, you will be issued a Suck Cola Registry Number. I have designated my bottle SC0005, having reserved the first four Registry Numbers, SC0001-SC0004, for Suck.com co-founders Joey Anuff and Carl Steadman.

Suck the web site has now been dead for as long as it was active, but the Cola lives on.


Jürgen Stumpf owns three wine

Jürgen Stumpf owns three wine bars in Berlin that operate on the honor system.

For the price of 1 euro (about $1.50), you rent yourself a glass and get to sample as many of the wines as you want. At the end of the night you throw some bills or coins into a big jar, the amount based on what you think is fair.


Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a bomb on

Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour… Who fares worst health-wise, diet soda drinkers or fried food eaters? Surprisingly, researchers have found a correlation between diet soda consumption and metabolic syndrome.

The one-third who ate the most fried food increased their risk by 25 percent compared with the one-third who ate the least, and surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.

What I Learned Today did some further digging and found a different study that links diet soda consumption and obesity.

For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

- 36.5% for up to 1/2 can each day
- 37.5% for 1/2 to one can each day
- 54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day
- 57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.


The winners of this year’s DWR’s Champagne

The winners of this year’s DWR’s Champagne Chair Contest have been announced. The winning chairs are more professionally designed as the years go on.


Costco is selling Mexican Coke

Costco is selling Mexican Coke made with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup, at least in the San Francisco area. “Costco has conformed to CA and U.S. rules, such as CRV (the sort-of deposit you pay for the bottle) and ‘nutrition’ labeling, so everything appears to be nice and legal.” (via serious eats)


Time to lower the drinking age? “The

Time to lower the drinking age? “The age at highest risk for an alcohol-related auto fatality is 21, followed by 22 and 23, an indication that delaying first exposure to alcohol until young adults are away from home may not be the best way to introduce them to drink.”


Compared with Snapple, whiteout, and Pepto Bismol ($123.20/

Compared with Snapple, whiteout, and Pepto Bismol ($123.20/gallon), gasoline is surprisingly inexpensive. “$21.19 for WATER - and the buyers don’t even know the source. No wonder Evian spelled backwards is Naive.”

Update: Rob Cockerham did a more extensive analysis of liquid pricing a few years ago.


Some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the embodied energy

Some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the embodied energy of bottled water: “the cost to produce and deliver a bottle of imported water is $0.22, leaving $1.28 per bottle profit for the manufacturer and the retail store”.


Crushpad lets you make your own wine

Crushpad lets you make your own wine from the comfort of your own home. “Crushpad offers a web-based system called MyCrushpad that allows you to monitor and manage your wine remotely.You’ll be able to create your winemaking plan online, see pictures of your grapes while they’re still on the vine, access the dozens of statistics (like sugar, acids, fermentation temperatures, etc.) our winemakers use to make decisions about handling the fruit. You’ll be able to check on your wine at every stage from the vineyard to the barrel to the bottle no matter where you are.”


A list of possible Red Sox-inspired wines.

A list of possible Red Sox-inspired wines. Matsusake, Two-Buck ‘Tek, Coco Cristal, and Big Papinot Noir all sound delicious.


As this video demonstrates, an 8.5x11 piece

As this video demonstrates, an 8.5x11 piece of paper can be folded into a beer bottle opener. (via clusterflock)


The Taste3 conference has put some videos

The Taste3 conference has put some videos from their 2006 conference up on YouTube. All three talks they posted are worth a look: Dan Barber of Blue Hill, global warming and wine, and Bryant Simon on Starbucks.


Tea Birds is a blog of nothing

Tea Birds is a blog of nothing but cute girls having tea. (via bb)


Park Smith is no ordinary wine collector…

Park Smith is no ordinary wine collector…he’s got 65,000 bottles in a cellar measuring 8,000 square feet.


One of the most enjoyable presentations at

One of the most enjoyable presentations at Taste3 was by mad scientist David Arnold, who made gin and tonic onstage, but without the tonic. (He added the fizz directly to the gin with a CO2 canister.) Pete Wells recently profiled Arnold in Food & Wine magazine. And here’s an article from IT World.


Hiroshi Tanaka demonstrated his “fast aging” technique

Hiroshi Tanaka demonstrated his “fast aging” technique for wine at the Taste3 conference. I tasted some of the “after” wine and it was better and smoother than the “before” wine. A promising technique, especially for cheaper wines and spirits.


Slate’s wine columnist considers which champagne Jay-Z

Slate’s wine columnist considers which champagne Jay-Z should drink now that he’s given up the Cristal. Taste and prestige are not the only considerations: “Take, for instance, this line from the Jay-Z hit ‘Can’t Knock the Hustle’: ‘My motto, stack rocks like Colorado/ auto off the champagne, Cristal’s by the bottle. ‘Salon’ can be substituted for ‘Cristal’ at no cost to the flow.”


Jay-Z is banning Cristal champagne in his

Jay-Z is banning Cristal champagne in his clubs after some “racist” comments by the champagne house’s managing director in The Economist. I think Jay-Z is confusing race with culture here; I can’t imagine two cultures that are more different from each other than American hip hop and French champagne production. Despite his hesitancy about discussing a culture unfamiliar to him, I thought the director essentially said that they aren’t worried about the bling lifestyle association because it’s ultimately good for business. (via bb)


Cork’d is a community for wine lovers

Cork’d is a community for wine lovers that lets you catalog what’s in your wine collection, what your friends are drinking, and discover what you should be drinking. (It’s a little like Flickr or del.icio.us for wine.)


Science blog Cocktail Party Physics has a

Science blog Cocktail Party Physics has a list of “physics cocktails” in the sidebar (scroll down a bit). The Black Hole is “so called because after one of these, you have already passed the event horizon of inebriation.” Boy, am I a huge sucker for physics puns.


Long, varied, and interesting recap from a

Long, varied, and interesting recap from a participant at the 2006 United States Barista Championship. The drink he prepared for the competition (scroll to the bottom for the recipe) was called Coffee and a Cigar, a coffee drink with tobacco in it. “The tray never touches the table - ever. That’s just a faux pas that I think should result in immediate disqualification. What reason is there to place your dirty tray bottom on your clean table? None.”


eGullet has serveral publicly available online classes

eGullet has serveral publicly available online classes you can take, including this one on wine tasting. Looks like a great resource.


Mexican Coke is growing in popularity

Mexican Coke is growing in popularity in the US, despite Coca-Cola’s insistence that it’s the same product. (And for the record, it does taste different and better because of the real sugar used.)


Influential wine critic Robert Parker gave 90 to 91

Influential wine critic Robert Parker gave 90 to 91 points (out of 100) to a wine made by porn star Savanna Samson, denoting it as “an outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character”. I’ll leave you to make your own jokes about the wine’s “great body” and “long legs”.


Speaking of wine blogs, Wine Library has

Speaking of wine blogs, Wine Library has a video blog about wine. Not sure about the spit bucket thing on camera tho… (thx, erik)


The Pour is a wine blog by

The Pour is a wine blog by the NY Times wine guy, Eric Asimov. Asimov joins Frank Bruni on the food and bev blogging front for the Times. The Pour includes a list of links to other wine blogs and resources as well. Nicely done.