Coca-Cola Plans to Launch Its First Alcoholic Drink In Japan

By Guilo • 09 Mar 2018 in Breaking News

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Yes you read that headline right. Coca-Cola plans to launch it’s first ever alcoholic soda drink in its 125-year history.

This isn’t the first time that it has dabbled in the alcohol industry. In the 1970s, Coca-Cola was involved in the wine business.

The Japanese experiment is, however, unique in that Coca-Cola has traditionally identified themselves with cola and other non alcoholic beverages.

According to Coca-Cola Japan’s President Jorge Garduno, the new offering will be in Japan’s growing “Chu-Hai” category which for all you Japanophiles out there is a canned drink that traditionally consists of shochu and sparkling water with multiple flavouring variants.

Here’s a picture of Chu-Hai. (I keep thinking of a similar sounding phrase in Malaysia for some reason).

Canned liquor drinks known as Chu-Hai are popular in Japan.

Chu-Hai drinks come in a range of flavours such as grape, strawberry, kiwi and white peach and sometimes shochu is replaced with vodka.

The drink, which usually has between three to nine percent alcohol and is marketed by leading Japanese beverage companies such as Asahi, Kirin and Takara, is especially popular with young consumers and women.

For all you business people, the graph above shows you how popular Chu-Hai is.

“We haven’t experimented in the low alcohol category before, but it’s an example of how we continue to explore opportunities outside our core areas,” Garduno said in a press statement on the company’s website.

We can’t wait to get our hands on some Chu-Hai.

Let’s hope it does better than Garlic coke.

Ok turns out this picture was a hoax, however the Japanese do enjoy Garlic Coke.

Jats Takkola comes from Aomori, an area known as the garlic capital of Japan. In fact, as Rocket News 24 describes it, the product is specifically “from the garlic center of the garlic capital of Japan, also known as ‘Garlic Town,’ Sannohe Districts’ Takko Town.”

Supposedly, during the July garlic harvest, the entire town picks up the bulb’s pungent smell. And apparently they just had to find something new to do with their prize crop.

As for the beverage itself, the recipe is simple: Take one cola and mix in some finely ground garlic. (The company actually suggests turning the bottle over a bit to get a uniform flavour.)