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..this is the drink for me ... 'Baikal', I call it Baikalade, tee hee hee...
According to wikipedia it's been produced for the last 40 years or so in Russia and was re-branded (or whatever they had instead of rebranding in the USSR) in 1973 when Pepsi arrived there.
Named after the lake, which is often cited as being the lake with the largest volume of freshwater in the world; if the appearance of lake Baikal on a map were a scar you wouldn't bother with corrective surgery, but the key to all that water is the depth, apparently it extends more or less to the centre of the earth).
I like to think it's actually made from water direct from the lake, which may account for its muddy hue, but it also contains such healthy sounding ingredients as essential oil of eucalyptus and essential oil of bay laurel. Not sure if pepsi has that. It's doing wonders for the raging cold I incongrously seem to have contracted in the summer heat, and I should imagine it would be good for a hangover too..
Western palates might find it a little odd at first, its taste is rather subtle for those of us who are used to the corn syrup that sweetens coke and the others (corn syrup is a lot less sweet than cane sugar, which explains the confusion I've always had about how much sugar they say goes into coke; after all I couldn't imagine eating a whole cupful of cane sugar, but that's 'cos it isn't actualy cane sugar that goes into the drink. They have to put so much corn syrup to make it sweet). But I swear by it now.
Available in comfortingly old-style 0.33l glass bottles (remember when coke came in those?!) and a bigger 2 litre plastic bottle, I hope this guy that I posted about all those months ago stocks it too..
Baikalade - Enjoy.
