Someone recently posed the question, "What flavor is Coke?"  Well, cola flavor, obviously.  But what flavor is "cola"?  Is there a magical cola root, from which we derive the taste?  I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I ended up having to research the question to save my own sanity.

First thing's first.  You have probably heard by now that Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine.  This is 100% true, although the amount was, in the words of a Coke spokesperson, "trivial."  And I believe this - particularly considering the patent medicines of the day, which were heavily laced with sweet cocaine.  I understand it was excellent for the digestion.

What you may not know is that Coke is still flavored with coca leaves, even though it does not contain cocaine.  Cocaine is derived from an extract of the coca leaf.  A non-narcotic extract from coca leaves are now used to flavor Coke.  There isn't any cocaine in there, but there is definitely coca leaf extract.

One company in the United States, the Stepan Company has a license to import coca leaves, and import it does. It extracts the cocaine precursor from the leaves, which it sells to the one company in the United States, Mallinckrodt, which has a license to produce cocaine for medicinal use.  It sells the "spent" coca leaves to the Coca-Cola company, which uses them for flavoring.

And it must be a pretty important flavoring, else why go to the expense and bother?

In fact, at one point the Coca-Cola Company decided that it wasn't worth the expense and bother.  That would be the notorious flop known as New Coke.  One change to the formula for New Coke was that it did not contain any coca leaf extract. This would be a huge relief for the company, as I'm sure that coca leaf extract isn't cheap.  But everyone complained that New Coke was not tasty.  I wonder if they were really tasting the absence of the coca leaf extract?

I further wonder if this absence is what makes store brand and off-label colas so insufficiently tasty.  I assume Go 2 Cola and Shasta (the off brands I most often find here) skimp on an ingredient as rare, difficult to obtain, and bizarre as coca leaf extract.

Coca leaf extract is used in Red Bull Cola (where it caused some problems when German officials detected measurable levels of cocaine in the beverage - obviously someone wasn't denaturing their coca leaves properly).  However, Pepsi does not contain coca leaf extract.  

So in that sense, the taste of coca leaf is the taste that Coke and Red Bull Cola have in common, but which is not found in Pepsi.  If that helps to clarify.  (I tasted Red Bull Cola once and thought it was awful.  Even though I have learned to like Red Bull proper.  But if anyone can explain what flavor Red Bull is, they'll really be onto something.)

According to Wikipedia, "the basic cola taste is vanilla and cinnamon."  I can kind of see that, but obviously it goes so much farther!  

Also, now I am really thirsty.