L&P

L&P stands for Lemon & Paeroa, and it's probably the only soda endemic to New Zealand. Paeroa is a town south of the Coromandel peninsula, about 45 minutes from this weekend's day-trip destination of Thames. For years it was apparently made by combining lemon and other secret flavo(u)rings with Paeroa's natural mineral water. Now it's made locally by Coca-Cola, so it's probably just artificial flavors mixed with Dasani.

Nevertheless, L&P proclaims itself as "World Famous in New Zealand" (I'll give you a minute to get the joke there), and it was one of the things I wanted to try most when I came here.

First point of note: soda can be really expensive here. It's not out of the ordinary for a 600 mL (20 oz) bottle of L&P or any other soda or water to cost NZD$3 ($2.10) or more, especially if you're out to eat. The vending machines at my school sell it for NZD$3.60 per bottle, which is even more expensive than movie theaters. On the flip side, you can get Coke and L&P in old-fashioned style glass bottles, which somehow always makes the soda taste better. Schweppes' carbonated lemonade (sold only in a glass bottle) is also very good.

Both bottles and cans of L&P open with a satisfying hiss, accompanied by an effervescent white mist that eminates from the container like it's some sort of magical potion. This is especially noticeable with the glass-bottle variety, but even with standard 355mL cans, the mist of carbonation hovers and swirls over the top for a good few seconds.

I thought L&P was going to be NZ's answer to lemon-lime sodas like Sprite, but it's really quite different (hence, Sprite is also sold here). Most of the sodas here seem to be more carbonated than their American counterparts, and they're made with real sugar instead of artificial sweeteners or HFCS.

L&P has no direct taste analogue in US sodas, which makes it very hard to describe. If I were to try to do so in a word, it would be "dark." L&P itself a dark amber colo(u)r (incidentally, they call the middle color in a traffic light, which would be "yellow" in the rest of the world, "amber" in New Zealand), and it has a pleasant, almost maple-syrup like quality to it. The lemon taste is definitely present, and the bubbles from the carbonation give it more of a kick. It's almost as if you made Sprite more sour, and combined it with equal parts Coke and root beer. That's as close as I can get to describing it using American counterparts. And since L&P is only sold in New Zealand, you'll just have to take my word for it.