Peruvian people are very patriotic, and believe it is good to buy Peruvian products. While Coca-Cola and Pepsi became popular around the world as symbols of western luxury, Peruvians enjoyed their own unique cola drink – Inca Kola.
Inca Kola is very distinctive, as it tastes quite unlike the big cola brands, it is more like bubble gum flavour using a native herb called ‘Hierba Luisa’, but what you will notice before you even taste it is the colour; Inca Kola is bright yellow, like the legendary gold of the Incas.
It was originally created in 1935 by the Lindley family, immigrants from England, who had a successful bottling operation in Lima.
Inca Kola quickly became popular and Coca-Cola tried for many years to compete with it, even changed its recipe slightly in Peru to try and make the flavour more similar but could not succeed. Inca Kola was the most popular cola in the market and still is so Coca Cola knew they could never win and needed a new strategy…
Inca Kola was eventually partly bought by Coca Cola in 2005 for hundreds of millions of dollars. Now the Inca Kola company help market and distibute Coca Cola with total share of 60% of the market. For patriotic Peruvians this was bad news but Peruvian entrepreneurs are quick to spot an opportunity and many new cola brands have now emerged for the thirsty patriot.
Kola Real is made by a Peruvian company and is now the third most popular cola in Peru. They have also launched a golden cola called ‘Oro’. In 2002 a new drink arrived that was very proud to be Peruvian, called ‘Peru Cola’ which is like a traditional dark cola. Because Inca Kola is unsual in being yellow in colour, the same company also launched Isaac Kola, a gold cola to compete with Inca Kola.
Kola Real is available in many flavours such as strawberry, orange, pineapple, lime-lemon and cola flavour.
There are other colas that you will find in Peru that you never see in the UK. For a tourist fromn the UK maybe the strangest of these is Kola Inglesa (English Cola) and Kola Escocesa (Scottish Cola) which you cannot buy anywhere in the UK!
Kola Escocesa is very tipical from Arequipa and I haven’t seen it anywhere outside there, it’s made using natural mineral water from Yura outside Arequipa, it has a very nice taste and you can find a no added sugar version as well. It doesn’t have caffein or phosphoric acid (used in many fizzy drinks specially cola with negative effects in bone calcium and kidney health) , it’s a fizzy drink but it feels kind of “natural” and it goes very well with traditional spicy food from Arequipa.
www.incakola.com.pe
www.kolainglesa.com.pe
www.kolaescocesa.com
www.perucola.com.pe
www.ajegroup.com (Kola Real)
