LIVEWIRE: ALL THAT FIZZ

Last week,antique hunter Cliff Kluge claimed to have found the recipe for Coca-Cola.

Last week,antique hunter Cliff Kluge claimed to have found the recipe for Coca-Cola. Kluge and his wife bought a set of papers from an estate sale and among them was the soda recipe. Or so he thinks. So Kluge put the recipe up on eBay for 15 million. A 15-year-old bid for it,but last heard,the teenager fell a few dollars short of 15 million and Kluge is still waiting.

THE BIG SECRET? The cola recipe and its Merchandise 7X,a combination of flavourings,is the stuff of mythology and countless conjectures. The company says its recipe is a tightly guarded secretand has been so since the 19th century. But the story of the secret recipe is said to be a clever marketing ploy,a self-propagated myth. The recipe is supposedly tucked away in a vault at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta and is entrusted only to two Coke executives who cant ever travel on the same plane for fear that the secret might go down with them.

STORY OF A DRINK: One afternoon,John Pemberton,an Atlanta chemist who made cough medicines and other concoctions,stirred up a fragrant,caramel coloured liquid and took it to the nearby Jacobs Pharmacy. There,the mixture was combined with carbonated water and a few customers were made to try out the sample. They all agreed that it was a special drink and so Jacobs Pharmacy put it on sale for five cents a glass. In 1887,Pemberton sold the recipe to a businessman,Asa Griggs,who placed it for safekeeping in the then Georgia Trust Bank.

SPILLED8230; In 2011,one of Americas most celebrated radio broadcasters,National Public Radio,claimed to have discovered the Coke secret in a notebook of Pembertons friend,on a page entitled Coca-Cola recipe improved. Was this the real recipe? Coca-Cola wont say but NPR published it online and their website crashed from all the traffic.

FUZZY FIZZ: Is the Coca-Cola you drink the same that Pemberton concocted? Not quite. Cocaine,a stimulant that was legal in the 19th century,was removed from the drink in 1904. So the extract of coca leaves were used only after the cocaine had been removed. In 1980,the company replaced sugar from beet and cane with the high-fructose corn sweetener.

DONT TRY

AT HOME:

Coca-Cola Improved,the recipe NPR claimed to have found in 2011,has coca leaves extract,caffeine,sugar,lime juice,vanilla and caramel. The secret 7x flavouringsalcohol and six oils orange,lemon,nutmeg,coriander,neroli and cinnamonare added to this syrup.