La Dorada – The Big Red of Argentina

07/16/09  Print This Post Print This Post    6 Comments   Popular   Written by Kate Sedgwick
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I love weird soft drinks. In every China Town and Korea Town I am always on the look out for cans that promise chunks of foreign fruit matter – drinks that eat like a meal. Odd favor, texture, unexpected ingedient or a cool can? I’m there.

The other night I was out for an otherwise lovely dinner in a Peruvian restaurant in the Once neighborhood here in Buenos Aires. When my initial order for a diet drink was declined due to diminished supply, I looked to the cooler to my left and saw the yellow wonder you see here.

“I’ll take the La Dorada,” I said to the waiter.

Moments later, my friend and I were drinking this. It looks like Mountain Dew but tastes like the trashiest, low-rent soft drink of the Southern States: Big Red.

Nectar of the Gods? Um. No.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure, Big Red is fun to drink, but you’ll be disgusted with yourself for enjoying it. It tastes like Bazooka bubble gum with the volume turned all the way up in liquid form. It’s so sugary you might swear it’s thicker than your average soda – a carbonated syrup infused with a dye that probably causes cancer.

This “La Dorada de la Pachamama” is “Inca” flavored. La Pachamama is the Mother Earth goddess of the people of the Andes. Perhaps you don’t believe that a soft drink company could be this tacky? I assure you, it is.

This is absurd in the same way that naming a knock-off Laffy Taffy, “Peter at the Pearly Gates” would be, further classifying its treacly sweet flavor as “Catholic.” But there are still Catholics around to object, I guess.


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About the Author

Kate Sedgwick

Kate Sedgwick co-edits Matador Nights from Buenos Aires where she teaches English, learns Spanish and thoroughly enjoys herself. Her art and writing have appeared in print and on-line publications and her novel in progress will be received with prurient glee by critics of American culture if it ever gets into their grubby little hands. Find out more about her than you ever wanted to know here. (Author photo by Sebastian Santana).

6 Comments... join the discussion!

  • Adam replied on July 16, 2009

    This sounds like Inka Kola times ten

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  • tom gates replied on July 16, 2009

    I think that Red Bull is 10x more disgusting. If this crap was bottled and marketed by Coke or Pepsi, it would probably be huge.

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  • Hal replied on July 16, 2009

    Yeah, I think the “Inca” flavor is probably a reference to Peru’s national soft drink: Inca Kola. Has the same enticing chemical color, anyway.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Kola

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    • Kate Sedgwick replied to Hal on July 16, 2009

      Wow! What a lot of information on that Wiki. Yeah – same stuff. Is it even sadder that “La Dorada de la Pachamama” is the generic “Inca Kola?” I don’t know what to think anymore. Maybe I’m just thinking too hard.

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      • Hal replied to Kate Sedgwick on July 16, 2009

        Feeling drained? Try a swig of good ole Inca Kola. Cures what ails ya. ;)

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  • Julie replied on July 18, 2009

    I’ll have to take a photo of the soda aisle at the Trade Fair in Long Island City, NY. Pretty sure La Dorada is there– along with Schin (sp?), Inca, and a whole liquid smorgasbord from the Americas. You’d be buzzing just looking at it.

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