In terms of global domination, Coca-Cola is definitely the real thing. In Britain, we spend £1.15bn a year on the company’s products. It is our biggest grocery brand.
Even if you want to, it may be impossible to shake off the influence of this corporate behemoth. In 2004, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, attempted to explain why Coca-Cola outsells Pepsi, despite Pepsi proving more popular in blind taste-tests (the famous “Pepsi challenge”). Using MRI brain scans, they found that, in blind tests, people focused solely on flavour. However, when the subjects knew they were drinking Coke, that information triggered sophisticated brain activity involving memory. This poses a tantalising possibility: has decades of iconic Coca-Cola advertising – all those celebrations of world peace, racial harmony and hot builders taking their tops off – hardwired a love of Coca-Cola in all of us? Possibly.
Yet some analysts still insist that Coca-Cola is finally going flat. In early 2016, UK volume sales were down 5%, while the lower-calorie Coca-Cola Life has flopped and in 2018 the sugar tax comes in. After years of stuttering growth globally, in which Coca-Cola has arguably failed to adjust to a new healthier era, could it face years of slow decline? In the UK, 55% of its sales are still in mainline, high-sugar Coca-Cola.
Certainly there are newcomers to the market, such as Karma Cola, which uses kola nuts (4x250ml, £3.95, Waitrose; as a control, I’d give this 7/10) and Fentimans Curiosity Cola (275ml, £1.19, Waitrose, 8/10), which are expensive and acquired tastes, but offer more complex flavours than classic Coke (1.75l, £1.70-£2, 5/10). But what of the cheaper supermarket own brands? Can any of them rival this epic beverage?
Morrisons, cola, 2l, 54p
“Great-tasting cola that’s bursting with bubbles,” runs the label – which is 50% true. Aggressive carbonation is this cola’s only memorable characteristic. Unscrewing the lid, it emits a whoosh like a door opening on the starship Enterprise and, yes, it prickles on the tongue. But beyond that? Despite smelling like a cross between cola and a particularly zesty washing-up liquid, it tastes thin and indistinct; recognisable as cola, but only just. Imagine its flavour as a tiny figure crouched in the corner of a gloomy room.
2/10
Asda, Chosen By You cola, 2l, 49p
Like Coke Life, this augments its sweetness using “steviol glycosides”. It may be notably lower in sugar than its competitors (19g per 250ml, as opposed to around 26g), but that hardly makes it a healthy alternative. Nor does it taste very nice. Once the carbonation settles down – at first, it is like having your tongue rigorously scrubbed – the cola flavour comes over in a brief, dank, concentrated hit, one that leaves some rather iffy sickly-sweet, astringent aftertastes jostling in its wake.
3/10
Marks & Spencer, Simply M&S cola, 1l, 95p
Broadly, if a cola has fruit and vegetable concentrates listed in the ingredients (usually apple, carrot, hibiscus), it will be significantly tastier than the competition. In terms of its flavour profile and its amber colour, the M&S version is no Coca-Cola doppelganger (on that basis, picky kids may reject it), but adults should relish its comparative complexity. It is arguably too skewed to the two ends of the cola spectrum, sweetness and tartness, but it packs some interesting apple, caramel and citrus notes into its familiar cola-flavour framework.
6/10
Co-op, Loved By Us Original cola, 2l, 59p
Bless the Co-op for its labelling, which points out that frequently drinking sugary drinks may lead to poor nutrition: “Try to restrict these drinks to mealtimes and replace them with sugar-free drinks, milk or water.” That may explain its curious attempt at a cola, one bluntly dominated by burnt sugar, grape juice and stewed fruit flavours. You can either mimic classic Coca-Cola or do something more interesting. This does neither.
4/10
Aldi, Vive cola, 2l, 42p
If in the 1980s you ever moaned at your mum for buying own-brand cola, the cheap, sweet smell of this will be positively Proustian. It is the aroma of Adam & the Ants and Grange Hill, if not good cola. Fierce carbonation cannot hide that. Insomuch as this cola has any discernible flavour, it is a foggy, muffled one of penny sweets and dark berry fruits, with a cloying, syrupy aftertaste. Metaphorically, this is like sucking on a cola cube all covered in fluff that you have dug out of your pocket.
2/10
Tesco, cola, 2l, 55p
An exception to the fruit’n’veg concentrate rule: even the addition of molasses cannot give this any serious oomph. On the nose, it is possibly the most convincing coke-not-Coke out there, but the bold aroma is misleading: the drink itself is watery and weak. Yes, you might register hints of kola-nut-type compounds, apple and tart, citric flavours in there, but only vaguely. It is about as convincing in its cola flavour as the average cola ice lolly – only less refreshing.
4/10
Sainsbury’s, Classic cola, 2l, 90p
If cola is all a matter of branding, Sainsbury’s should rethink this product’s label. An arrangement of stars, bubbles and swooshes, it looks like the result of a primary school project. Nonetheless, it smells dense and fuggy with cola and, while its flavour is thinner than specialists such as Fentiman’s, it packs a powerful, fruity cola punch. It is not a million miles away from the real thing, but, with its feints towards dandelion and burdock territory (and despite a slightly stale-lemon aftertaste), it has more character.
7/10
Waitrose, Essential cola, 2l, 90p
You know how your heart sinks when the only cola available in the pub is heavily diluted, pumped postmix? Well, Waitrose have chosen to bottle that (absence of) flavour in a sweet, syrupy, watery drink. You have to stop and really, really concentrate to discern any flavour beyond a basic fulfilment of “cola”. The only exciting thing here is the pressurised-contents warning to point the bottle away from your face as you open it. Just how many people does cola injure each year?
2/10
