Why were Colas born in the south?

I'm sitting in the birth place of Pepsi, New Bern, NC & it dawned on me that the birthplace of all major colas, in this country is the south. RC & Coke in Georgia. Pepsi in North Carolina, even Dr. Pepper hails from Texas. Anyone know why?

Maybe because it's so freakin' hot for months on end!

To paraphrase Del Reeves, "Everything's got to be somewhere."

Remember that most of those sodas were originally meant to be medicinal and were created by pharmacists (Dr. Pepper legally isn't a cola, but it was still created by a pharmacist). Most of the other old non-colas were created by pharmacists, also, and were created before Coca Cola: Vernor's (1866, Detroit), Hires Root Beer (1875, Philadelphia) and Moxie (1876, Massachusetts, actually a doctor, but you get the idea).

But except for Dr. Pepper, the South didn't produce many early non-colas. Big Red didn't show up until the mid-30s, 7up (in St Louis) around 1929, and Ski until the 50s.

So, I guess, why did the South focus on Cola at the expense of other flavors, and why did the rest of the country focus on other flavors? I don't really know. My guess is that it's sort of like New York Pizza and the Chicago Style Hot Dog. One person came up with the idea, it became popular regionally, and everyone else jumped on the bandwagon.

Some pharmacist in the south came up with a cola syrup and it was a hit. Regional travelers had a taste and found it cured what ailed them, went back home and asked their own local pharmacist to come up with something similar. Coca Cola was, to a certain extent, created in this manner: John Pemberton created a knockoff of the very popular Vin Mariani (wine+coca leaves) by adding kola nut extract. The county he was in went dry, so he took out the wine, tweaked it a bit, and lo, we have Coca Cola. My guess is Pepsi and RC came about because of the popularity of Coca Cola, sort of like why we have Giordano's and Edwardo's and Lou Malnati's, in addition to Pizzeria Uno.

This is all speculation on my part, but it makes sense..

Also, the important thing about soft drinks was that they were, as the name suggests, as opposed to hard drinks.

The South was an area where alcohol was illegal in many parts both before and after Prohibition. H.L. Mencken called a place like Dayton, Tennessee (site of the Scopes monkey trial) part of "the Coca-Cola Belt" not only because Coke was bigger there than, say, Maine-based Moxie but because it meant adults were drinking childish sugar beverages when men in proper cities like Philadelphia or Milwaukee drank good German beer. Soft drinks existed elsewhere but before World War II, they weren't widely consumed by grownups. That doesn't exactly explain how they got a head start over anything else in the South, but it does show why, once they had it, they spread much more rapidly among all age groups there.

My bet would be that, since kola nut is indigenous to Africa, and many groups in West Africa chewed kola nut as a stimulant, and West Africa is where most slaves came from, that the South got cola first for the same reason they got sesame and okra first in the US—they came with the slaves. Pretty much everyone liked things that kept you awake, hence the interest in tea, coffee, and cocaine. I would imagine there were a variety of non-standardized kola nut preparations available before Coca-Cola came along, but since the nut is bitter, a sweet application would have been welcomed. As noted above, it was marketed first as a medicine—adding soda to the syrup was a later addition.

As a point of interest, while Coca-Cola, which most folks know at one time contained cocaine, was marketed as a medicine and tonic to adults, 7-Up was marketed to families as a soft drink -- with the promise that the lithium it contained at first would help them relax. Makes you wonder why they used the word "up" in the name.

I could be completely talking out of my ass, and most likely I am, but colas seem to be a natural extension from sweet teas.

jpschust wrote:I could be completely talking out of my ass, and most likely I am, but colas seem to be a natural extension from sweet teas.

As a lover of sweet tea, Mexican Coke, Dr. Pepper, & Coke Zero, I respectfully disagree, except in both instances the beverages are cold & brown.