169 Fun Facts About Beverage

In which city did pharmacist John Pemberton first sell his new temperance soda in 1886?

Atlanta's Jacobs Pharmacy poured the first glass in 1886, after the city voted to go dry and Pemberton reworked his coca wine tonic into an alcohol-free syrup.

What nickname stuck to the sweeter Coca-Cola formula that sparked protests in 1985?

New Coke beat both the old recipe and Pepsi in taste tests, yet the outcry was so loud that the original came back that July as Coca-Cola Classic.

Which figure starred in White Rock ginger ale adverts in 1923, years before the Coca-Cola campaign often credited with shaping his look?

Santa Claus was selling White Rock mineral water by 1915 and its ginger ale by 1923, so Coca-Cola's famous 1930s adverts did not invent the jolly man in red.

Under what name was Pepsi first sold in 1893 at a North Carolina drugstore?

Brad's Drink was named for its creator, pharmacist Caleb Bradham, who rechristened it Pepsi-Cola in 1898 and lost the company in 1923 after betting heavily on sugar prices.

Pepsi got its 1898 name from a supposed benefit for which bodily function?

Digestion was the pitch: the name probably comes from pepsin, a digestive enzyme, and early adverts promised relief from indigestion, headaches and drowsiness.

Charles Alderton created Dr Pepper at a drugstore soda fountain in which Texas city?

Regulars simply ordered 'a Waco'. The name Dr Pepper was in commercial use by 1885, a year before Coca-Cola.

A long-running rumour claims Dr Pepper secretly contains which ingredient?

Prune juice has never been in the recipe, the company insists; nobody knows who started the rumour, though theories blame a rival's deliveryman or a Bob Hope remark.

Which word, hinting at a mood-lifting mineral, came before 'Lemon Soda' in 7 Up's early-1930s name?

Lithiated meant the soda claimed lithium citrate, a mood-stabilising compound sold in many tonics of the day; the word had gone from the name within a few years.

Fanta was created in 1940 in which country, after a trade embargo cut off supplies of Coca-Cola syrup?

Max Keith of Coca-Cola Deutschland created Fanta in Germany in 1940 from whey and apple pomace; the name came from 'Fantasie' after staff were told to use their imagination.

Before it was a soda, 'mountain dew' was 19th-century slang for which drink?

'Mountain dew' meant moonshine whiskey; the Hartman brothers of Knoxville, Tennessee, first sold the soda in the 1940s as a whiskey mixer, with a hillbilly label showing a barefoot mountaineer and a rifle.

Root beer's traditional flavour comes from the root bark of which tree?

Sassafras root bark flavoured root beer until 1960, when the FDA banned its aromatic oil, safrole, over cancer fears; most makers switched to a safrole-free extract.

The word 'cola' comes from the caffeine-rich seed of which plant?

Kola nuts, chewed as a stimulant across West Africa, flavoured the first colas and gave them their name, though most modern brands get their caffeine elsewhere.

Which country is home to the bright orange soft drink Irn-Bru?

Scotland's A.G. Barr launched it in 1901 as Iron Brew; the spelling became Irn-Bru in the 1940s, when new labelling rules demanded names be literally true and the drink was not brewed.

Ginger ale was first made in the 1850s by apothecary Thomas Cantrell in which Irish city?

Belfast's Thomas Cantrell is credited with the first ginger ale, a dark golden style; the paler kind that swept North America was created in Toronto about fifty years later.

Where is Kaldi, the goatherd credited in legend with discovering coffee, usually said to have lived?

Ethiopia is where the legend has Kaldi's goats too lively to sleep after eating coffee cherries; in most tellings he took the fruit to a monastery, and the monks spread the word.

The earliest credible reports of coffee drinking come from 15th-century Sufis in which land, home of the port of Mocha?

Yemen's Sufis drank coffee to stay alert through night-time devotions, and until about 1700 nearly all the world's supply was still grown there.

Which country grew about 31% of the world's coffee beans in 2023, more than any other?

Brazil's first coffee seedlings, legend says, were smuggled out of French Guiana in 1727 hidden in a bouquet from the governor's wife; by the 1840s it led the world.

Luigi Bezzera, who patented an improved espresso machine in 1901, worked in which Italian city?

Milan's Luigi Bezzera built a machine that brewed coffee to order in seconds; Desiderio Pavoni bought his patents in 1903 and the pair unveiled it at the 1906 Milan Fair.

Starbucks takes its name from the chief mate in which novel?

Starbuck is the first mate of the Pequod in Moby-Dick; co-founder Gordon Bowker admitted the novel had little to do with the business, as partner Terry Heckler just thought words beginning with 'st' sounded powerful.

Starbucks opened its first store in 1971 in which city?

Seattle's first Starbucks opened in 1971 near Pike Place Market as a shop for coffee beans and brewing gear, a model its founders borrowed from Berkeley roaster Alfred Peet.

Black, green, oolong and white tea all come from the leaves of which single plant species?

Camellia sinensis makes every true tea: the difference lies in processing, with leaves left to wither and oxidise longer to go from green through oolong to black.

Grenadine, the red cocktail syrup, was traditionally made from the juice of which fruit?

Pomegranate is 'grenade' in French, which gave grenadine its name, though most modern brands are made from artificial flavourings instead.

Which country, known for tulip-shaped tea glasses, drank the most tea per person in the 2010s?

Turkey drank about 3 kg of tea a head each year, ahead of Ireland; the habit is barely a century old, encouraged after the First World War made coffee scarce and costly.

The tea dumped into Boston Harbor in December 1773 belonged to which company?

The East India Company was stuck with 17 million pounds of unsold tea, so Parliament's Tea Act let it ship straight to America, and the colonists revolted.

Some of the men who dumped the tea in Boston Harbor dressed up as which people?

Mohawk warriors were the disguise of choice because destroying the tea was a crime: the raiders hid their faces before boarding the three ships.

Masala chai takes its name from 'masala', a Hindi word for a blend of what?

Spices such as cardamom and ginger are the masala; the drink took shape when railway-station tea sellers began loading their brew with milk and sugar.

Matcha's vivid green colour and umami come from doing what to the tea bushes before harvest?

Shading them from the sun for the last weeks before harvest boosts chlorophyll and the savoury amino acid theanine; the leaves are then ground, so you drink them whole.

Where did bubble tea, with its chewy tapioca pearls, originate in the 1980s?

Taiwan has two rival claimants: a Tainan tea-shop owner who says he added tapioca balls in 1986, and a Taichung tea house that dates its version to 1988.

Which country is the world's largest producer of milk, ahead of the United States?

India makes more than a fifth of the world's milk, thanks largely to Operation Flood, the co-operative dairy programme launched in 1970 that turned a milk-short country into the top producer.

Kopi luwak, one of the world's most expensive coffees, is made from beans that have passed through which animal?

Civets eat ripe coffee cherries and pass the beans whole; the high price has led to wild civets being caged on plantations, a practice animal-welfare researchers condemn.

Frozen orange juice concentrate grew out of a wartime search to replace the sour lemon powder soldiers refused in what?

K-rations came with a lemon powder so acidic that troops left it undrunk, so the Army ordered an orange version; when the war ended, its makers froze the concentrate and sold it as Minute Maid.

Red Bull was derived from which Thai energy drink?

Dietrich Mateschitz tried Krating Daeng on a business trip to Thailand, found it cured his jet lag, and partnered with its creator Chaleo Yoovidhya to carbonate the recipe for Western tastes.

The Thai name of the drink that inspired Red Bull translates as 'red' what?

Gaur are the huge wild cattle of South and Southeast Asia; Chaleo Yoovidhya named his tonic after them, and Red Bull kept the two charging animals from its label.

Red Bull was launched in 1987 in which country?

Austria was Mateschitz's home: he founded Red Bull GmbH there in 1984 with his Thai partner Chaleo Yoovidhya and spent three years adapting the drink before launching it.

Juice maker Hansen Natural launched which energy drink in 2002, later taking its name?

Monster so outgrew the fruit juices Hansen had sold since the 1930s that the whole company renamed itself Monster Beverage in 2012.

Which compound, first isolated from ox bile, is a signature ingredient of energy drinks such as Red Bull?

Taurine takes its name from taurus, the Latin for bull, because two German chemists first extracted it from ox bile in 1827.

Gatorade was developed in 1965 by a team of researchers led by Robert Cade at which southern university?

University of Florida doctors mixed it for the school's football team, the Gators, hence the name; the first batch tasted so bad that Cade's wife suggested adding lemon juice.

What did Joseph Priestley create by hanging water over a Leeds brewery's fermenting vats?

Carbonated water was Priestley's hoped-for remedy for scurvy; it cured nothing, but his method went on to launch the soft-drink industry.

German-born watchmaker Johann Jacob Schweppe founded Schweppes in 1783 in which Swiss city?

Geneva was where Schweppe had worked as a watchmaker since 1765 and where he devised a way to bottle fizzy mineral water; he took the business to London in 1792.

Perrier pulled its water from shelves worldwide in 1990 after a US laboratory found traces of which substance?

Benzene turned up in an American laboratory's tests; Perrier traced it to a gas filter that had not been changed on time and insisted the spring itself was clean.

Which multinational owns Evian mineral water?

Danone has owned Evian since about 1970, when its forerunner BSN, a glass-bottle maker moving into food and drink, took control of the Alpine water brand.

Which German writer gave young chemist Friedlieb Runge the box of coffee beans from which he first isolated caffeine?

Goethe was so taken with Runge's demonstration of belladonna widening a cat's pupil that he handed over some prized coffee beans to analyse, and Runge soon found caffeine in them.

What daily caffeine intake does the European Food Safety Authority consider safe for healthy adults?

400 mg a day raised no safety concerns for healthy adults in EFSA's 2015 opinion, though it warned that even 100 mg close to bedtime can disturb sleep.

The Maya and Aztecs drank cacao and also used its beans as what?

Currency grew on trees in Mesoamerica: a single cacao bean bought a tamale on one Aztec price list, and forgers passed off fakes moulded from wax or dough.

What does SCOBY, the culture used to ferment kombucha, stand for?

SCOBY stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast: the rubbery mat that ferments sweet tea, nicknamed the 'tea mushroom' though it is no mushroom at all.

Kombucha is believed to have originated in which country?

China is the usual answer, perhaps the Bohai Sea coast, though the early history is thinly documented; the name is probably a mix-up with Japanese kombucha, an unrelated kelp tea.

The oldest known evidence of beer, 13,000-year-old residues, comes from a cave on Mount Carmel in which modern country?

Israel's Raqefet Cave was a Natufian burial site, and residues in its stone mortars suggest hunter-gatherers brewed a gruel-like beer for feasts honouring the dead.

The pale lager first brewed in Plzeň in 1842 came from which present-day country?

Plzeň lies in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic; its unusually soft water suited the pale lager, pilsner, that Bavarian brewer Josef Groll first made there in 1842.

In 1759 Arthur Guinness signed a lease on the St. James's Gate brewery in Dublin for how many years?

9,000 years at £45 a year was the deal Arthur Guinness signed on the last day of 1759; the lease no longer applies, because the company later bought the site outright.

The earliest known traces of wine, from around 6000 BCE, were found in which country?

Georgia's 8,000-year-old jars, dug up just south of Tbilisi, held grape wine, and Georgians still ferment in buried clay qvevri today; the oldest known winery is next door in Armenia.

Blanquette de Limoux, the oldest recorded sparkling wine, was first made in 1531 by whom?

Benedictine monks at the abbey of Saint-Hilaire were bottling fizzy Limoux wine in 1531, well over a century before sparkling wine made Champagne famous.

Dom Pérignon's superiors at Hautvillers originally ordered him to do what with the bubbles in their wine?

Bubbles were a fault that burst bottles in the cellar, so Pérignon was told to get rid of them; his lasting contribution was the art of blending grapes from different vineyards.

Sake is brewed from which grain, polished to remove the bran?

Rice starch cannot ferment by itself, so a koji mould turns it to sugar while yeast makes the alcohol in the same vat, a method closer to brewing beer than making wine.

Tequila is distilled from which plant?

Blue agave, strictly the blue Weber variety, is the only kind allowed in tequila; it thrives in the red volcanic soil around the town of Tequila in Jalisco.

British colonial officers in India drank quinine, the bitter key ingredient of tonic water, to ward off which disease?

Malaria was the threat, and the quinine that warded it off was so bitter that officers took it with sugar and gin, giving the world the gin and tonic.

Rum originated in the 17th century in which region?

The Caribbean is rum's traditional birthplace, first recorded on Barbados about 1650, though a similar spirit was being distilled elsewhere in the Americas a century earlier.

Mead is defined by getting most of its fermentable sugar from what?

Honey and water are all mead needs, which helps explain why it is thought to be among the oldest alcoholic drinks; a spiced version is metheglin, from the Welsh for physician.

Besides tequila and fresh lime juice, what is the third ingredient in the IBA's official margarita?

Triple sec is the 4 in the IBA's 10:4:3 mix of tequila, orange liqueur and lime; 'margarita' is Spanish for daisy, and the drink is probably the old Daisy cocktail remade with tequila.

Which city is regarded as the birthplace of the mojito?

Havana's La Bodeguita del Medio displays a note signed in Hemingway's name praising its mojito, though the signature may well be a fake.

A dry martini garnished with cocktail onions instead of olives is called what?

A Gibson swaps the olive for a pickled onion; who Gibson was is disputed, with claims for illustrator Charles Dana Gibson and for a West Coast businessman of the same name.

The martini may have evolved from the Martinez, served in the 1860s at the Occidental Hotel in which California city?

One story has San Francisco's Occidental Hotel serving it to drinkers bound for the evening ferry to Martinez; that town insists one of its own bartenders invented it instead.

A Bloody Mary made with gin instead of vodka is known as what?

The gin version is a Red Snapper, the name under which Fernand Petiot's tomato cocktail was first served at New York's St. Regis Hotel in 1934, before 'Bloody Mary' took over.

Which caffeine-rich South American drink is brewed from holly leaves?

Yerba mate is sipped from a hollow gourd through a metal straw, the bombilla, whose strainer tip keeps the leaf fragments out of the mouth.

In Valencia, horchata is traditionally made from which ingredient?

Tiger nuts are not nuts at all but the small tubers of a sedge; Valencians soak and grind them for horchata de chufa, while the Mexican version is made from rice.

Lassi, the yogurt drink, originated in which region of South Asia?

Punjab is lassi's home, where it is traditionally handed over in a kulhar, an unglazed clay cup made to be thrown away after a single use.

Kvass, the mildly alcoholic drink of Eastern Europe, is traditionally fermented from what?

Rye bread, dried and steeped in hot water, is the traditional base; the mash ferments for only about half a day, which is why kvass stays so low in alcohol.

Ayran, the yogurt drink of Turkey and the Balkans, is made from yogurt, water and what?

Salt seasons the thinned yogurt; in 2013 prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared ayran, not beer, the national drink.

Which festive drink may have grown from posset, hot milk curdled with wine or ale?

Eggnog likely grew out of posset; at Christmas 1826, cadets at West Point who were banned from drinking spiked theirs anyway, and the party ended in a riot.

Scotch whisky's first record, in 1494, calls it 'aqua vitae', meaning what?

Water of life is also what 'whisky' means: the word comes from the Gaelic uisge beatha, which says exactly the same thing.

Which berry gives gin its defining flavour?

Juniper 'berries' are really the fleshy seed cones of a conifer; they gave gin its piney taste and its name, a shortening of genever, the Dutch word for juniper.

Gin became widespread in England after which 1688 event brought William of Orange to the throne?

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 put the Dutch William of Orange on the English throne; restrictions on French brandy that followed helped his homeland's spirit, genever, take hold in England.

Which country rivals Russia as vodka's birthplace, with the word first recorded there in 1405?

Poland has the earliest written record of the word, in Sandomierz court papers from 1405, though the name was not yet attached to the spirit.

Along with Chardonnay and Pinot noir, which grape is used to make almost all champagne?

Meunier, like Pinot noir, is a dark-skinned grape, so most champagne is a white wine made from black fruit, pressed gently enough that the skins never tint the juice.

Port wine is produced in which valley of northern Portugal?

Douro Valley grapes make port, which is named for Oporto, the port city at the river's mouth; fermentation is stopped early with grape spirit, which leaves the wine sweet and strong.

Palomino grapes grown around Jerez de la Frontera become which fortified wine?

Sherry is simply the English way of saying Jerez, the Andalusian town at the centre of the trade; sweet styles use Pedro Ximénez or Moscatel grapes instead.

Modern vermouth was first produced in the 18th century in which Italian city?

Turin merchant Antonio Benedetto Carpano launched the first sweet vermouth in 1786, and it is said to have quickly won over the royal court of Savoy.

Milkshakes gained widespread popularity after the introduction of which appliance?

Electric blenders made milkshakes a soda-fountain staple: Steven Poplawski's 1922 drink mixer let counters whip ice cream into milk quickly, and Walgreens popularised the malted milkshake the same year.

Cacao was first domesticated about 5,300 years ago, not in Mexico but where?

South America's upper Amazon, in what is now Ecuador, is where pottery residues show cacao in use before it ever reached the Maya; most of today's crop grows in West Africa.

An 1852 Michigan Farmer recipe for which drink called for Epsom salts, egg and milk?

E. M. Sheldon's 1852 cream soda recipe in Michigan Farmer mixed water, cream of tartar, Epsom salts, sugar, egg and milk, to be taken with bicarbonate of soda as a temperance drink.

The 'Dry' in Canada Dry's name refers to what?

Not being sweet is the meaning, as in a dry wine: John J. McLaughlin's 1904 Toronto ginger ale was far less sugary than the others then on sale.

Sales of Tang were poor until NASA used it on whose Mercury flight in 1962?

John Glenn drank Tang aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962, and later Gemini flights carried it too, creating the misconception that it was invented for the space programme.

Which powdered drink was invented in Hastings, Nebraska, in 1927?

Kool-Aid was invented in Hastings by Edwin Perkins, and Nebraska later named it the official state soft drink; the town marks the link each August with Kool-Aid Days.

Kool-Aid's liquid predecessor was called what?

Fruit Smack was the bottled concentrate Edwin Perkins sold first; to cut shipping costs he worked out how to remove the liquid, and the famous drink mix was the result.

Ovaltine, still sold at home as Ovomaltine, was launched in 1904 in which country?

Switzerland's Georg Wander developed malt extracts in his Bern laboratory; when his son Albert launched Ovomaltine in 1904, it was sold only in pharmacies as a tonic for the weak and exhausted.

Which malted drink invented the fictitious condition 'night starvation' as an advertising gimmick?

Horlicks was first sold as a food for infants and invalids; the invented ailment, supposedly cured by a mug at bedtime, helped turn it into a night-time drink.

Vimto, invented in 1908, contains the juice of grapes, blackcurrants and which other fruit?

Raspberries, grapes and blackcurrants flavour Vimto, first sold in 1908 as a health tonic called Vim Tonic; it later became a favourite for breaking the Ramadan fast in parts of the Arab world.

Which British drink began in 1927 as a Newcastle pharmacist's glucose tonic for the sick?

Lucozade was sold for half a century as a pick-me-up for invalids, in glass bottles wrapped in cellophane, before a 1983 rebrand turned it into a sports drink.

Ribena was handed to British children in WWII as a supplement of what?

Vitamin C was the point: blackcurrants are rich in it, so when U-boat attacks cut off orange imports, the government had blackcurrant syrup made and handed out free to children.

Orangina was created in the early 1930s as 'Naranjina' by a pharmacist from which country?

Spain's Agustín Trigo, a pharmacist from Valencia, showed Naranjina at the 1935 Marseille trade fair, where French Algerian grower Léon Beton bought the formula and renamed it Orangina.

Inca Kola's sweet flavour comes mainly from which plant?

Lemon verbena, the herb known locally as hierba luisa, gives Inca Kola its bubblegum-sweet taste; in 1999 Coca-Cola bought half of the company behind its bright yellow rival.

Which Japanese sports drink began after a drug-company researcher watched a doctor rehydrate by drinking IV fluid?

Pocari Sweat came from Otsuka, a maker of IV solutions: researcher Rokuro Harima saw a doctor drink one to rehydrate and proposed a version people could buy, launched in 1980.

The name of Ramune, the Japanese soda sealed with a glass ball, comes from which English word?

Lemonade, as Japanese speakers heard it, became 'ramune'; Scottish pharmacist Alexander Cameron Sim is credited with popularising the fizzy drink from Kobe in the 1880s.

The name Yakult was coined from 'jahurto', a word for yogurt in which language?

Esperanto's 'jahurto', meaning yogurt, gave Yakult its name; microbiologist Minoru Shirota launched the drink in 1935, five years after culturing the hardy bacterium it is built on.

Which milky, lightly sparkling Korean liquor is traditionally ladled from a bowl?

Makgeolli is cloudy because its chalky rice sediment is left in rather than filtered out, which is why drinkers stir it with the ladle or gently flip the bottle before pouring.

Chinese baijiu is usually distilled from which fermented grain?

Sorghum is the main grain in most baijiu, including Moutai, the fiery brand poured at the welcoming banquet for Richard Nixon on his 1972 visit to China.

Pisco is a spirit produced in the winemaking regions of Chile and which other country?

Peru's port of Pisco, which shipped the brandy, probably gave it its name; Spanish settlers began distilling it in the 16th century to replace the orujo they had been importing from Spain.

Cachaça, Brazil's most popular spirit, is distilled from what?

Cachaça is distilled from fresh sugarcane juice rather than molasses, which separates it from most rum; outside Brazil it is used almost exclusively in cocktails such as the caipirinha.

Ouzo has its roots in tsipouro, said to be the work of 14th-century monks on which mountain?

Mount Athos, Greece's monastic peninsula, is where tradition places the first tsipouro; a version of that pomace spirit flavoured with anise later came to be called ouzo.

Limoncello's slightly cloudy appearance comes from what?

Essential oil droplets cloud limoncello: lemon oils drawn from the zest form a spontaneous emulsion when the alcohol is diluted with sugar syrup, the same 'ouzo effect' that turns ouzo milky.

The first test batch of Baileys mixed Irish whiskey and cream with which supermarket product?

Chocolate powder rescued the mix: David Gluckman recalls stirring Irish whiskey into cream with a colleague, finding it awful, adding sugar, then going back to the shop for drinking chocolate.

Baileys' maker says the cream in every bottle stays fresh without preservatives thanks to what?

Its alcohol preserves the cream, the maker says, which is why a bottle of Baileys is guaranteed for two years from the day it is made, opened or not, in the fridge or out.

Kahlúa, the Mexican coffee liqueur, is made from arabica coffee, sugar and which spirit?

Rum, not tequila, is the spirit in Kahlúa, which Pedro Domecq began producing in 1936 in Veracruz, the Mexican state where its arabica coffee grows.

Jägermeister, the German liqueur, has a name that means what?

Master hunter was a real job title for senior German foresters and gamekeepers; Curt Mast, a keen hunter himself, borrowed it for the 56-herb liqueur he launched in 1935.

Campari was originally coloured red with carmine, a dye derived from what?

Crushed insects, namely cochineal, yield carmine; Campari was dyed with it from Gaspare Campari's 1860 invention in Novara until the company dropped the bugs in 2006.

Aperol's name comes from 'apero', slang for apéritif in which language?

'Apéro' is French slang for an apéritif; Luigi and Silvio Barbieri of Padua borrowed it when they launched Aperol in 1919 after seven years of experimentation.

The House of Angostura produces its famous bitters in which country?

Trinidad and Tobago has been home to Angostura since 1875, when founder Johann Siegert's sons moved production to Port of Spain from the Venezuelan town that gave the bitters their name.

Angostura, the Venezuelan town that named the bitters, sits at a narrowing of which river?

Orinoco waters squeeze to about a mile wide at the town, whose old name is Spanish for 'narrowing'; it was renamed Ciudad Bolívar in 1846 in honour of Simón Bolívar, who held his 1819 congress there.

The Negroni is said to have been first mixed in 1919 in which Italian city?

Florence's Caffè Casoni is where, the story goes, Count Camillo Negroni asked bartender Fosco Scarselli to stiffen his usual Campari and vermouth with gin in place of soda.

Equal parts vermouth and Campari topped with soda, but no gin, is known in Italy as what?

The Americano is Campari, sweet vermouth and soda; swap the soda for gin and it becomes a Negroni. It is also the first drink James Bond orders in the first novel, Casino Royale.

The Bronx cocktail adds which juice to gin and both sweet and dry vermouth?

Orange juice turns gin and two vermouths into a Bronx; Waldorf bartender Johnnie Solon said he named it after the Bronx Zoo, because customers told him of the strange animals they saw after a few drinks.

The old fashioned got its name from drinkers asking for a cocktail the original way: spirit, sugar, water and what?

Bitters completed the cocktail as first defined in print in 1806; once bartenders began adding curaçao, absinthe and other liqueurs, drinkers who missed the simple version asked for it 'old-fashioned'.

Historians credit the daiquiri to Jennings Cox, an American working in Cuba as what?

A mining engineer, Jennings Cox worked the iron mines by Daiquirí beach in eastern Cuba around 1898, which is how his mix of rum, lime and sugar came by its name.

The name 'piña colada' literally means what in Spanish?

'Piña colada' is Spanish for 'strained pineapple', after the freshly pressed and strained juice; Puerto Rico, where the cocktail was created, proclaimed it its official drink in 1978.

The IBA's cosmopolitan mixes citron vodka, cranberry juice and lime juice with which orange liqueur?

Cointreau is the orange liqueur in the IBA's recipe; a late-1990s hit, the pink drink was Carrie Bradshaw's regular order with her friends on Sex and the City.

Which cocktail did 'Trader Vic' Bergeron say he invented in Oakland in 1944?

Mai Tai, by Bergeron's account, was what he mixed for friends visiting from Tahiti, its name allegedly from 'maita'i', Tahitian for 'good'; rival Donn Beach called it a knock-off of his own Q.B. Cooler.

The mint julep is a symbol of which sporting event?

The Kentucky Derby's track, Churchill Downs, has promoted the mint julep since 1938, serving almost all of them in collectible glasses: about 120,000 over the two race days in 2009.

Kefir, the tangy fermented milk drink, originated in which mountain range?

Caucasus households traditionally made kefir in goatskin bags hung by a doorway, so that everyone passing through would knock the bag and keep the milk and grains mixed.

Oat milk was developed in the 1990s by Rickard Öste, a scientist from which country?

Sweden's Rickard Öste developed oat milk in the 1990s and co-founded Oatly; when the dairy lobby sued over the slogan 'Milk, but made for humans', Oatly published the lawsuit and sales rose.

Glera is the main grape of which Italian sparkling wine?

Prosecco used to be the grape's own name; in 2009 it was renamed Glera so that 'Prosecco' could be protected as a place name, after a village near Trieste.

Cava, Spain's best-known sparkling wine, comes almost entirely from which region?

Catalonia's Penedès area makes about 95% of all cava; producers adopted the name, from their cellars, in 1970 to set the wine apart from French champagne.

The riddling table, which clears champagne of its sediment, was devised in 1816 at which champagne house?

Veuve Clicquot's widowed owner, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot, is credited with the idea: bottles rest neck-down in a board full of holes and are turned until the sediment gathers at the cork.

Beaujolais nouveau is released for sale on which day each year?

The third Thursday of November has been the fixed release day since 1985, only weeks after the harvest; distributors then race to get the first bottles to markets around the world.

Which Italian company introduced the stovetop Moka Express coffee maker in 1933?

Bialetti founder Alfonso launched the aluminium Moka Express in 1933, and his son Renato made it a household name; when Renato died in 2016, his ashes went to the funeral inside a moka pot.

Café owners in Australia and which other country both claim to have invented the espresso-based flat white?

New Zealand and Australia both claim the flat white, though the name was already in use in England in the 1960s for an espresso-based coffee.

Turkish coffee is prepared in a small pot called what?

A cezve is a small long-handled pot in which very finely ground coffee is boiled unfiltered; the grounds left in the cup are sometimes read to tell the drinker's fortune.

Which coffee-making method steeps coarse grounds for 12 to 24 hours?

Cold brew swaps heat for time: coarse grounds soak in cool water for 12 to 24 hours, giving a concentrate that is then diluted with water or milk.

By the best-known account, Irish coffee was first served in the 1940s to warm passengers arriving in Ireland by what?

Flying boat passengers stepping ashore at Foynes, near Limerick, had whiskey added to their coffee by chef Joe Sheridan in 1942 or 1943, the story goes, and the drink caught on from there.

Earl Grey tea is flavoured with oil from the rind of which citrus fruit?

Bergamot oil scents Earl Grey; the Grey family's story is that the blend was made for Lord Grey to offset the lime in the water at Howick Hall, their Northumberland home.

Darjeeling tea comes from which Indian state?

West Bengal's Darjeeling hills got their first tea bushes in 1841, planted by Archibald Campbell, an East India Company doctor sent to build a hill station there for the British.

What does 'rooibos', the caffeine-free South African infusion, mean in Afrikaans?

Rooibos is Afrikaans for 'red bush': oxidising the needle-like leaves turns them a distinctive reddish-brown, and the plant is usually grown in the Cederberg mountains of the Western Cape.

Thomas Sullivan, who popularised the tea bag around 1908, sent out his tea samples in pouches made of what?

Sullivan, a New York tea merchant, sent samples in small silk bags that customers steeped whole; Roberta Lawson and Mary McLaren of Milwaukee had already patented a 'Tea Leaf Holder' in 1903.

Richard Blechynden helped popularise iced tea at the 1904 World's Fair in which city?

Blechynden ran the India Tea pavilion at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair; in the summer heat he poured his hot tea over ice, helping make iced tea an American habit.

Which US city did a 2006 Fiji Water advert mock, prompting its water department to test Fiji's bottles?

Cleveland was the butt of the line 'The label says Fiji because it's not bottled in Cleveland'; its lab then reported 6.31 micrograms of arsenic per litre in Fiji Water and none in city tap water.

Roy Allen sold his first mugs of root beer at a California parade held in honour of whom?

World War I veterans were being honoured in Lodi in June 1919 when Allen set up his roadside stand; he later teamed up with employee Frank Wright, and their initials became A&W.

Moxie, the bitter New England soda, gave American English a slang word meaning what?

Courage, nerve, spirit: 'moxie' passed into slang by about 1930 from adverts for the gentian-root tonic, first sold in the 1870s as Moxie Nerve Food.

Which state designated Moxie its official soft drink in 2005?

Maine made Moxie its official soft drink in 2005; creator Augustin Thompson was born in Union, Maine, though he first produced it in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Vernors ginger ale was first sold by pharmacist James Vernor in which city?

Detroit pharmacist James Vernor served his ginger ale at his drugstore soda fountain; the brand dates itself to 1866, though his own 1911 trademark filing said it first went on sale in 1880.

Fresca, introduced by Coca-Cola in 1966, was originally flavoured with which fruit?

Fresca launched in 1966 as a bottled sugar-free diet soda with a grapefruit flavour, originally sweetened with cyclamate until the FDA banned it in 1969.

Coca-Cola's first diet drink, launched in 1963 and discontinued in 2020, was called what?

Tab, launched in 1963, was Coca-Cola's first diet drink; its saccharin sweetener was linked to bladder cancer in rats in the 1970s, and the brand was dropped in 2020.

Unveiled in 1982, Diet Coke was the first new brand since 1886 to do what?

Diet Coke was the first new brand since 1886 to use the Coca-Cola trademark, yet it is not Coca-Cola minus the sugar: it has a recipe of its own, sweetened mainly with aspartame.

The Icee, forerunner of the Slurpee, was born in 1958 when what broke at Omar Knedlik's Kansas Dairy Queen?

The soda machine failed, so Knedlik chilled bottles in the freezer; customers loved the slush that formed when they were opened, and 7-Eleven later bought his machines to launch the Slurpee.

Nesquik's cartoon mascot, who swapped the Q on his collar for an N in 1999, is what animal?

A rabbit, the Quik Bunny, has sold the chocolate milk mix on American television since 1973; his letter changed when Nestlé dropped the US name Quik and went by Nesquik everywhere.

Capri-Sun was launched in 1969 by Rudolf Wild's company in which country?

West Germany's Rudolf Wild & Co. launched it in 1969 as Capri-Sonne, named after the Italian island of Capri, then a fashionable but affordable holiday spot for Germans.

Which sports drink did Coca-Cola launch in 1988 to challenge Gatorade?

Powerade arrived in 1988 against a rival with a two-decade head start; in 2001 PepsiCo bought Quaker Oats, largely to get its hands on Gatorade.

Which energy brand was launched in 2004 by Manoj Bhargava, a former monk who became a billionaire?

5-hour Energy packed its kick into a two-ounce shot rather than a can; Bhargava, who had spent more than a decade at an ashram in India, later signed the Giving Pledge.

Which Hollywood actor became the public face of Nespresso's adverts in the 2000s?

George Clooney fronts the coffee-capsule brand, and has said the fees help pay for a satellite that keeps watch over Sudan for signs of atrocities.

Twinings has occupied the same premises on which London street since 1706?

The Strand is where Thomas Twining bought Tom's Coffee House in 1706 and began selling tea alongside the coffee; the shop at No. 216 still trades, under a logo unchanged since 1787.

The ribbed shape of Coca-Cola's 1915 contour bottle was inspired by an encyclopedia picture of what?

A cocoa pod did the job by accident: designer Earl Dean went to the library to look up the drink's ingredients, found nothing useful, and copied the gourd-shaped pod pictured in an encyclopedia instead.

Cheerwine, produced since 1917 in Salisbury, North Carolina, is what flavour?

Cherry is the flavour of the burgundy-red soda, made in Salisbury since 1917, when L.D. Peeler and partners bought a bankrupt Kentucky syrup company and moved it to North Carolina.

Which child star gave her name to a mocktail of ginger ale and grenadine?

Shirley Temple was no fan of the drink, which she called saccharine sweet and icky, and in 1988 she went to court to stop a bottled soda being sold under her name.

Mezcal is made from the heart of the agave plant, which is called what?

The piña, named for its pineapple look once the leaves are cut away, is traditionally roasted in pit ovens before it is crushed and fermented, which is what gives mezcal its smoky taste.

Under EU rules, which two countries can label their product 'Sangria'?

Spain and Portugal alone may sell it as plain 'Sangria' under EU rules; made anywhere else, it must be labelled an aromatised wine-based drink with the producing country named.

Which cocktail did Dick Bradsell create in 1980s London for a model who wanted something to wake her up?

Espresso martini is the name that stuck, though the drink holds neither gin nor vermouth: Bradsell shook vodka, coffee liqueur and a fresh espresso at the Soho Brasserie around 1983.

A Moscow mule is properly served in a mug made of what?

The Moscow mule, a buck of vodka, ginger beer and lime, is traditionally served in a copper mug, a 1940s marketing pairing that has stuck.

Which French brandy is distilled twice in pot stills from white wine made mostly of Ugni blanc grapes?

Cognac starts as a thin, acidic white wine, mostly Ugni blanc, that has been called virtually undrinkable, yet it is ideal for distilling twice and ageing in oak.

By US law, bourbon must be made from a grain mixture that is at least 51% what?

Corn must make up at least 51% of the mash, and the spirit has to be stored in a new charred oak container, so each bourbon barrel can be used for bourbon only once.

The Lincoln County Process filters Tennessee whiskey through charcoal made from which wood?

Maple charcoal mellows Tennessee whiskey before it is barrelled; the process is named for Lincoln County, once home to Jack Daniel's distillery, yet it is no longer used in that county at all.

'Frappuccino' blends 'cappuccino' with 'frappé', a New England word for what?

A thick milkshake made with ice cream is a 'frappe' in New England; Boston's Coffee Connection coined 'Frappuccino' from it, and Starbucks got the name by buying the chain in 1994.

Tim Hortons was founded in 1964 in which Ontario city?

Hamilton got the first shop in 1964, opened as a sideline by hockey star Tim Horton with partner Jim Charade; Horton died in 1974, and it was Ron Joyce who built the chain.

Which baseball star fronted Yoo-hoo's 1960s adverts with the line 'It's Me-He for Yoo-Hoo'?

Yogi Berra, in a pinstriped business suit, drank a bottle and delivered the line; the chocolate drink itself dates from 1928, when Natale Olivieri created it in Garfield, New Jersey.

S.Pellegrino sparkling water is bottled at San Pellegrino Terme in northern Italy, in which region?

Lombardy's spa town of San Pellegrino Terme has drawn visitors for centuries; Leonardo da Vinci is said to have come in 1509 to sample and study the water that is bottled there today.

Which company has owned the V8 vegetable juice brand since 1948?

Campbell's has owned V8 since 1948; the name counts the eight vegetables in the original juice, a blend led by tomato.

Numbered 'Real Facts' are printed inside the bottle caps of which drink brand?

Snapple prints the trivia under its caps; the brand began in 1972 with an apple juice, and its name is a blend of 'snappy' and 'apple'.

SunnyD, the orange drink sold as Sunny Delight until 2000, was developed in 1963 by Doric Foods in which state?

Florida's Doric Foods created it in Mount Dora in 1963; its beta-carotene colouring made headlines in Britain when a four-year-old who drank about 1.5 litres a day was reported to have turned orange.

Which juice brand, founded in 1947 by Sicilian immigrant Anthony Rossi, pioneered chilled orange juice that was never concentrated?

Tropicana's Anthony Rossi developed flash pasteurisation in 1954 so that fresh juice could be sold chilled rather than frozen, and later sent it north on the company's own refrigerated Juice Train.

The 'John Daly' is a boozy twist on which golf-named drink, adding vodka to iced tea and lemonade?

An Arnold Palmer is half iced tea, half lemonade; adding vodka makes it a John Daly, after the golfer famed for hard living. MillerCoors sold a malt-based Arnold Palmer Spiked from 2018.

Ripe guaraná fruit, the source of the flavour in Brazil's Guaraná Antarctica soda, is often said to look like what?

Eyeballs is the usual comparison: the red fruit splits to show a black seed on white flesh, a look that inspired an origin myth among the Sateré-Mawé people of the Amazon.

Which root beer, first sold in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1898, is advertised with the slogan that it 'has bite'?

Barq's began when Edward Barq left the family's New Orleans bottling business for Biloxi; unlike most root beers, some of its versions contain caffeine.

Coca-Cola launched Mello Yello in 1979 to compete with which rival drink?

Mountain Dew, PepsiCo's citrus hit, was the target when Coca-Cola launched Mello Yello in 1979; the company tried again with Surge and later Vault.