Melvyn Minnaar Potable pleasures
The nickname they have in common, promises pleasure. But whereas the white stuff offers play with a pinch of peril, the black substance carries a free-and-easy, “all-ages” prescription and a registered trademark.
To the contemporary tune of Always Coca- Cola, Coke is hailed as universal libation of fun with a long history. Sufficiently clouded in Yankee-Doodle folklore, an original ingredient — cocaine — is never mentioned. Neither are the actual components of a ubiquitous drink that loses the sipping stakes against mother’s milk by only a small margin.
With Pepsi out of the market after losing its umpteenth battle on African soil, and despite a dribble of house brands here and there, Coca-Cola is the reigning king of South African soft drinks. Mixed with a spirit of choice, it also provides volume to alcohol consumption in shebeens and swanky cocktail bars.
Brandy and coke have been in the big time for decades and, as a uniquely Sefrican dop for all kinds of people, are likely to remain so. Then there is rum’n’coke to warm the red-hot heart in the right situation.
Although our good brandies are obviously made to be enjoyed straight or “broken” with a little pure water, brands like Oude Meester, Klipdrift and Mellow Wood seems to find a perfect match with cola. The brandy’s woody-vanilla and sweet dried- fruit aromas match that uniquely “caramel feel” and gas of the cola.
Mixing it with rum was a most-favourite highball drink during World War II, when the Andrews Sisters got the world swinging to Rum and Coca-Cola in 1944. Actually the drink orginated in Cuba as Cuba Libre during the political struggles there.
Back then, the hearty, all-American CC company in Atlanta wasn’t chuffed because some the song’s lyrics referred to some off-beat morals and, for a time, people rhumba-ed to a diluted Rum and Limanada.
Coke’s own cash registers were already jingling to the tune of an insipid The Only Thing Like Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola Itself. It’s the Real Thing in those days. Only in 1971 did they catch on to tuning into the hit parade when I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke was hijacked from the New Seekers.
For the Andrew Sisters’ mix of Cuba Libre, one needs a strong, full-flavoured rum to jack-up the cola. No wonder Red Heart — a hefty blend from Barbados, Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica — is the most popular.
It was somewhere across the ocean from these islands where CC was “invented” in May 1886, according to the official history from the company.
Blended by one Dr John S Pemberton in Atlanta, Georgia, the name “Coca-Cola” was suggested by Dr Pemberton’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson. He penned the name Coca- Cola in the flowing script that is famous today. Coca-Cola was first sold at a soda fountain in Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta by a chappie called Willis Venable.
During its first year, sales of Coca-Cola averaged six drinks a day — adding up to total sales for that year of $50. Since the year’s expenses were just over $70, Dr Pemberton took a loss. Today Coca-Cola products are consumed at the rate of more than 834-million drinks per day. Or so they claim.
However much Coke headquarters — still in Atlanta — wants to present the drink’s image as innocence personified, they, as well as thousands of us know, that you Can’t Beat the Feeling (the 1989 jingle) of the mix and that rum, brandy and such Things Go Better With Coke (1963).