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[flakfizer]

Nope, it's not about Korea
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071003/lf_afp/lifestylerussiakvassdrink_071003134700


by Delphine Thouvenot
Wed Oct 3, 9:47 AM ET



MOSCOW (AFP) - Moscow streets may be crowded with Bentleys as Russia races into its oil-fueled future, but that has not stopped a boom in a traditional Russian peasant brew that has even caught the attention of US beverage giant Coca-Cola.


It's called kvass: a dark, fizzy, slightly sour-tasting drink made from bread or grain, with very low alcohol and very high popularity thanks to a surge of national pride in newly ascendent Russia.

"It's virtually your national patriotic duty to drink kvass!" teaching assistant Larisa Latkina told a class of school pupils as she led them on a factory tour of Ochakovo, Russia's biggest kvass brewer.

The purpose of the trip -- apart from demonstrating how the centuries-old beverage is fermented from rye -- is to convince a new generation of Russians "to drink more of our kvass than Pepsi-Cola," Latkina said.

Like many Russian companies, Ochakovo, which prides itself on being entirely Russian-owned since its creation in 1993, has seized on a revival in Russian nationalism to push its product.

Its adverts boast that kvass, which had a virtual monopoly on fizzy drinks during the Soviet era, is a "tradition that unites us."

Rival kvass brand Nikola takes a more aggressive approach, with ads crying: "Say no to cola-nisation!" and a video game on its website that pits a healthy Russian peasant against a cola seller alternately portrayed as a Nazi officer and a US tank.

In the real world, kvass is providing strong competition for Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the snackbars that litter the Moscow pavements. There are even modern replicas of the Soviet-style booths that sold the traditional brew by the glass or the cask.

Coca-Cola, a key symbol of the Westernisation of Russian society after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, knows which way the wind is blowing. It intends to launch its own brand of kvass in Russia next year.

"The recipe is already ready," Coca-Cola's spokesman in Russia, Vladimir Kravtsov, told AFP. Test marketing this summer in Samara, in the southern Russian Volga region, has led to the choice of the brand name "Tankard and Barrel."

The boom may not end soon. In the second quarter of 2007, Russian sales of kvass were up 50 percent on the same period in 2006, according to Canadean, a global beverage research company used by Coca-Cola.

Russians drank 690 million litres of kvass in 2006, only 10 million litres behind their beer consumption, Canadean said.

"The kvass sector is the area of the non-alcoholic drinks market that is growing the fastest in Russia," Kravtsov said, attributing the "renaissance of this industry which flourished under the Soviet empire" to its "traditional" image.

Many Russians still brew their own kvass at home, soaking black bread in a mixture of water and yeast and letting it ferment slightly.

Kvass even popped up in of one of the most scandalous Russian news stories in recent years. Russian KGB agent-turned-businessman Andrei Lugovoi, Britain's chief suspect in the London murder of another former Russian agent last year, is not in just any business. He is in the kvass business.

During the school trip to the Ochakovo factory, the guide boasted that an "authentic peasant recipe" was used by the firm, which was created in 1993 out of a state beer and kvass brewery.

Since then the firm has expanded, opening its most recent factory in the Siberian region of Tyumen in May.

Ochakovo is now looking abroad for new markets for the national drink, which is similarly popular in central Europe.

Its principal target is Germany, but it also wants to boost sales in France and the United States, where it is currently confined to specialist shops frequented by the Russian diaspora.

"I'm proud that our national drink is sold all over the world," said schoolgirl Gulia Mamedova during the Ochakovo factory tour.

In an aside that may have brought a sigh from her adult minders, she added: "But I like Coke too!"

[PGF]

capitalism is beautiful.

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