All hail soda, the nonalcoholic drink that started it all

That food media has historically limited its attention to alcoholic beverages is tremendously silly, considering age alone. And when you consider other numbers, it gets sillier and sillier. Every year, Americans drink about 635 million gallons of spirits, 931 million gallons of wine, and 6.4 billion gallons of beer.

They drink nearly 12 billion gallons of soda.

Perhaps we don’t pay as much attention to soft drinks as we do the hard ones because they’re so ubiquitous that we don’t notice them. Nearly half of us drink soda every day; in fact, I’ve mindlessly slurped down at least three Diet Cokes while writing this column without even noticing, and I’ll probably keep going till dinner. (I know it’s supposedly bad for me. I don’t care.)

Alcohol is an occasion. Soda is standard. Maybe that’s why we don’t give it the critical attention it deserves.

Of all the sodas, cola is the most popular by a multitude of miles, and yet few of us can say anything meaningful about it. It’s sweet? (Obviously.) It tastes like … things? (What do kola nuts even taste like?) It used to have cocaine in it? (Not entirely true — sorry to take the “fun” out of that fun fact.)

Cola’s history is founded on mystery — a closely guarded “secret recipe” John Pemberton whipped up at an Atlanta pharmacy back in 1886. The syrup that eventually got the name Coca-Cola was originally conceived as a tonic for common ailments, using the West African kola nut for its potent kick of caffeine, myriad spices and extracts commonly used in pharmaceutical compounding, phosphoric acid for battling nausea, French claret for sedation, and the South American coca leaf — the primary ingredient in common cocaine — for vitality.

When the U.S. government banned coca leaves in 1914, the Coca-Cola company negotiated special privileges to retain access, allowing them to import the leaves to a top-secret facility in New Jersey under the code name “Merchandise No. 5,” where they were stripped of their narcotic properties and used solely for their flavor. To this day, Coke is the only soda company allowed to do this, meaning that as a broader entity, cola’s flavor has nothing to do with coca, or cocaine.

Pepsi never had to deal with the headache of its key ingredients becoming a Schedule II drug. Another invention of the 19th-century pharmacy counter, its equally well-guarded recipe was crafted by North Carolina pharmacist Caleb Bradham in 1893, not as medicine but as a tasty, invigorating beverage to be served at the soda fountain. Like its most famous competitor, “Brad’s Drink,” as it was known at the time, contained kola nuts, as well a variety of oils and spices like lemon and nutmeg. Unlike its rival, it used sharper citric acid instead of phosphoric, giving Pepsi-Cola a similar, yet distinctive flavor profile.

In summation: All colas aren’t created equal. Each brand — Coke, Pepsi, Boylan’s and beyond — is entirely unique with its own set of flavorful virtues, just like beer, wine and spirits.

When used as a simple cocktail mixer, cola’s notes are normally buried beneath whatever spirit is put in charge. (For an easy nonalcoholic quaff, I love mixing it with a bit of Wilderton Earthen, or going the nostalgic route with a classic Roy Rogers.) But when enjoyed alone, the differences between each brand are discernible, and deserve to be dissected as you drink them. Be present. Be critical. As with most things, there is no “best” — there’s just different. In the Cola Wars, everyone can be a winner.