Iyoshi Cola

This is the cola that gave me goosebumps in the middle of a street in Tokyo. You could say this is the cola equivalent of a great grower champagne. I don't really drink soda, and I'm not a big fan of it either. So a cola giving me goosebumps was the last thing I expected. But that's exactly what this one did. It was placed in my hand on a street in Tokyo, served from a clear plastic bag with a slice of lemon wedged against the top and a straw stuck straight in. The golden, slightly cloudy liquid with the spices swirling at the bottom doesn't look like any cola you've seen before — it looks like something brewed, not bottled. The story behind it. This is the world's first craft cola, or at least the one that coined the term. Founder Kola Kobayashi was a self-proclaimed "cola maniac" who traveled the world tasting around thirty different colas before he stumbled by chance upon a over-hundred-year-old cola recipe online and started brewing his own. When his grandfather, a kampo pharmacist and thus a practitioner of traditional Japanese herbal medicine, passed away, Kobayashi found his old tools and recipes in the shuttered workshop. He moved in, and his grandfather's herbal medicine methods became the key that elevated the cola from experiment to craft. He combined the recipe he had found with his grandfather's spices and equipment, and it's that mix that became Iyoshi Cola. Everything is still made by hand in the little workshop by the Kanda River in Shimo-Ochiai, from kola nuts sourced in West Africa and more than a dozen spices, completely plant-based and without corn syrup. The name and the year 1954 on the label are a tribute to his grandfather's pharmacy, and even the plastic bag is intentional — Kobayashi was inspired by cola he had drunk out of bags in Southeast Asia. And then the taste. Forget the flat, sweet sugar profile of canned cola. This is cola as if someone suddenly turned up the resolution. Clove and cardamom settling on top, a warmth of cinnamon and nutmeg underneath, and a citrus freshness that lifts the whole thing. It's spiced in a way that feels almost perfect, balanced and just sweet enough, never sticky. The carbonation is lively without being aggressive, and the lemon slice does its job, pulling it all toward the fresh side. You can tell with every sip that this is something brewed with care, not mass-produced. The whole experience is stripped down and to the point: a cola out of a clear plastic bag, with a straw, drunk right there on the street. No fuss, no stilted staging, just the drink, the lemon slice and the spices swirling at the bottom. And that's exactly how it should be experienced. Casual, honest and with a charm that comes from someone genuinely caring about what they do. This isn't a thirst quencher, it's an experience. A cola that actually wants something, brewed by someone who cares to the point of obsession. Me, who barely touches soda, sat there wanting more. It makes regular cola feel like a copy of a copy. If you're in Tokyo: go and try it — absolutely worth a detour.