…….

Beverage: Champis.
Purchased in: Uppsala, Sweden.
Product of: Spendrups Bryggeri AB.
Alcohol: None.
Review: Screwing around with soft drinks in foreign countries is a fun hobby of mine, but it can also be a tremendous hassle - more often than not I come away from trying something for the first time with a sneer and a bad case of stomach cramps.

It’s not like my threshold for pain isn’t high. Anybody who has kicked back on Clement Street in San Francisco to enjoy a casual “grass drink” should know I’m well-equipped to suffer. But some of Sweden’s contributions to the carbonated beverage industry - chocolate banana soda and Svagdricka come to mind - immediately stacked up against some of the worst drinks I’ve ever had. Seriously, they were the stuff of nightmares, doctor’s visits and repeated allegations of fraud.

But then I had a Champis.

The sun came out.

And all of Sweden’s multifaceted soft drink sins were washed away in an angelic tide of golden-tinted goodness.

Ah, Champis. My one and only. What you see here in this picture is worth fighting for, my friends. It’s the stuff cults are born of, the be-all-end-all, the Alpha and Omega. It’s what Buddha was trying to make in 2,000 B.C. when he was tinkering around in the woodshed and ended up creating water.

What do we know about this sweet, refreshing godsend? It was perfected in 1918 or 1910, we can’t be sure, by a man who may or may not have been named Robert Roberts. It was among the first wave of soft drinks. The rest, as they say, is a mixture of wild speculation, unforgivable rumor and idle legend.

And it doesn’t matter why or when or where, anyway. Just mentioning Champis in this lowly blog is almost sacrilegious - Champis should have its own blog. It should write each and every day about why it’s so superior to anything else you’ve ever tasted, wanted to taste or will taste. It should be given the Golden Globe, the Pulitzer and the Nobel Peace Prize, all on its way to a new luxury estate in Monaco with diamond-lined driveways and heaping portions of Lobster Newberg served by an army of Marilyn Monroe clones every day at 11 a.m. sharp.

Hands down, Champis is one of the best drinks I’ve ever had in my life, even rivaling golden ginger ale, that shining example of American ingenuity that was all but exterminated by liquor-fueled Prohibition-era Americans dead-set on exercising their own shining example of how they stomp on anything wonderful. (For more on the Murder of Golden Ginger Ale see here and here.) Golden ginger ale is great, but it’s difficult to put anything above Champis.

I’m drinking it now and giggling - actually giggling. I haven’t been so merry since Orbitz floated to the surface of the soft drink scene in 1996.

Champis, I crown you a “King of Sodas.”

Good with: Anything.