From today's (July 19, 2006) San Jose Mercury, food section: Posted on Wed, Jul. 19, 2006 Obscure soda a staple at Bay Area Chinese events By Carolyn Jung Mercury News Sit down to almost any Chinese restaurant banquet meal in the Bay Area, particularly in San Francisco, and front and center on the Lazy Susan will be perched a bottle of Belfast Sparkling Cider. It has an Irish name and contains no fruit juice whatsoever. Yet this obscure non-alcoholic soda has been an incongruous must-have for celebratory Chinese banquets for generations. It's so entrenched in the culture that it's taken for granted. Most Chinese-Americans pour the spritzy soda into a glass of ice or mix it with a little whiskey or gin with nary a second thought. But this golden-hued, delicately flavored drink has surprisingly storied roots. Dating back to 1849 and the rip-roaring Gold Rush, Belfast Sparkling Cider is the oldest continuously bottled soda made in California, according to soda expert John Nese of Galco's Soda Pop Stop store in Los Angeles. And for indeterminate reasons, it's the Bay Area Chinese-American community that couldn't get enough of the bubbly beverage and has kept it alive. Its popularity endures even today when soda seems almost to have morphed into public enemy No. 1. Condemned for causing tooth decay and rampant childhood obesity, soda has been banned from school vending machines in many districts. Meanwhile, a deluge of super-sized containers has left the nation aghast. Last year, for the first time in 20 years, soda sales in the United States declined, according to industry trade publication Beverage Digest, as people began to reach instead for sports drinks, bottled teas and bottled waters. But specialty, old-time sodas such as Belfast Sparkling Cider continue to carve out a niche audience thirsting for nostalgia. Once, almost every city had its own local brand of soda, Nese says. But nowadays, Moxie in New England, Cheerwine in the Carolinas and Green River in the Midwest are among the few longtime ones that remain. ``There's no evidence that people are turning away from big national brands to these small, regional ones,'' says John Sicher, publisher of the Bedford Hills, N.Y.-based Beverage Digest. ``But people do love them. They grew up drinking these small brands. As long as they are marketed well and nourished, they will continue to maintain a spot in the industry.'' Little brand stays alive Bob Stahl, president of Golden Brands Beverage Distributors in San Francisco, admits he didn't know quite what he had on his hands when his company bought the Belfast brand six years ago from the now-defunct California Beverage Co. ``We knew less about it then than we do now. And we don't know a lot now,'' he says with a chuckle. ``If we hadn't taken it on, it might have disappeared. I'm not sure anyone else would have taken it over.'' Golden Brands Beverage distributes 100 drink brands, from Anchor Steam beer to Thomas Kemper Orange Cream Soda to Calistoga Spring Water. But Belfast Sparkling Cider is the only beverage it actually manufactures. Not much has changed in the way it's made, except that 2 1/2 years ago, bottling was switched from glass to plastic because it's cheaper and lighter, Stahl says. About 40,000 (12-bottle) cases are produced each year at a Modesto plant, a pittance compared with the other sodas and beers that Golden Brands distributes. And pretty much all of it is consumed by Bay Area Chinese-Americans. Stahl says his company supplies the 33.8-ounce cider bottles to almost every large Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, as well as to city retailers that have a large Chinese-American clientele such as Walgreens in Chinatown and Sunset Super in the Sunset district, where it sells for $1.09 to $1.79 a bottle. You can also find it on banquet tables at Ming's Chinese Cuisine and Bar in Palo Alto, and Dynasty Chinese Seafood in Cupertino and San Jose. And Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles sells special-size 12-ounce glass bottles for $1.95 each. Not surprising, each year during the month of the Chinese New Year celebration, sales for the cider jump 30 percent. Occasionally out of the blue, Stahl will even get a call from someone on the East Coast who grew up in San Francisco, remembers Belfast Cider, and now wants it for a special party. ``We've never marketed it,'' Stahl says of the cider's steady sales. ``It just hangs in there. It doesn't go away. Generation after generation still wants it.'' Calvin Chang, 50, a transplanted San Franciscan now living in the Los Angeles area, laments that Belfast Sparkling Cider isn't a staple at Chinese banquet meals in Southern California. He loves the soda so much that he used to buy it by the case at a San Francisco grocery just to enjoy at home. Even now, in his Cerritos house, there are two six-packs of special 12-ounce bottles in his garage, along with three of the original 33.8-ounce glass bottles. ``Sometimes I go on a binge and drink two small bottles a day,'' says Chang, a produce wholesaler. ``It's just so refreshing and light.'' From Ireland to S.F. Belfast Sparkling Cider's origins go back to Ireland, Nese says. When the potato famine hit Ireland in 1845, a wave of Irish refugees immigrated to the United States. They brought with them recipes, including the one for Belfast Sparkling Cider, which originally was packaged in kegs. When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848, Nese says, prospectors -- many of them sailors who had jumped ship in San Francisco -- arrived in droves to pan for nuggets. When the miners came to San Francisco to celebrate their riches, Nese says, they treated the bar girls of the Barbary Coast to imported French champagne. At least that's what they thought. In reality, ship captains paid the women to sip champagne-colored Belfast Sparkling Cider instead. So the women kept their wits about them as the miners got drunk. When the men awoke from their stupor, Nese says, they found themselves ``shanghaied'' and headed back to sea. How Belfast Sparkling Cider went from those rough-and-tumble days to the beverage of choice for honored occasions in the Bay Area Chinese-American community is harder to unravel. Like much in this region, it might have to do with location, location, location. California Beverage Co., which took over manufacturing of the cider in the early 1900s, was located on Pacific Avenue at the edge of San Francisco's Chinatown, recalls Richard Campodonico, whose grandfather started the company. In the early days, his grandfather sold seltzer water to Chinese customers. Flavorings were later added, and those resulting sodas, as well as Belfast Sparkling Cider, proved a hit with the Chinese clientele. California Beverage Co. eventually became the Pepsi-Cola bottling company for the Bay Area. When the family business was sold, Pepsi had no interest in taking over the Belfast brand, Campodonico says. But fortunately, Golden Brands did. ``I'm actually not amazed that Belfast is still going strong,'' says Campodonico, an East Bay businessman whose family no longer is involved in the soda industry. ``It just has incredible staying power in the Chinese community.'' Some speculate the cider's popularity might have to do with the three stars on the label. The number three has a fortuitous connotation because it sounds like ``ever growing'' in Cantonese. Chinese cookbook author Grace Young, a native San Franciscan, surmises that the gold-accented label appeals to Chinese-Americans because it's the color that symbolizes wealth and good fortune. The lightly sweet cider with its subtle hints of lychee and pear also is a better match than super-sugary sodas for the vibrant flavors of Chinese cuisine. Martin Yan, the Bay Area-based star of Chinese cooking shows on public television, thinks the answer may be even simpler: Chinese restaurants tend to copy one another, so when one started serving the cider, the others naturally followed suit. Shirley Fong-Torres, who leads culinary tours through San Francisco's historic Chinatown, remains perplexed about why the cider became the desired drink of so many Chinese-Americans. With a chortle, she jokes, ``Probably because it was on sale!'' A taste of yesteryear Whatever the reason, Belfast Sparkling Cider remains a throwback to yesteryear, when sodas were treats to be sipped appreciatively on special occasions, not guzzled unthinkingly morning, noon and night. When Tyra Wong, 42, of Hayward weds fiance Bob Clark on Aug. 6 at the Lucie Stern Center in Palo Alto, toasts will be made afterward with Belfast Sparkling Cider. Because her friends are toting the cases of soda to the site beforehand, Wong admits that the lighter plastic bottles were the primary reason she chose Belfast over glass-bottled Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider. She has fond memories of Belfast at many a Chinese restaurant. But she had no idea she was serving something so historic. ``It just makes me think of wedding banquets, and special-occasion, Chinese-restaurant, big-round-table food,'' Wong says. ``And I do like the taste.'' --------------------------------- Contact Carolyn Jung at (408) 920-5451 or [email protected] Fax (408) 271-3786. 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