Russians say no to 'cola-nization'

Western imports like Coca-Cola and Pepsi once stifled the commercial kvas market. But today, a kvas revival has taken hold as Russia's companies pitch it as a patriotic cola alternative, and Russians are repatriating their tastebuds with gusto.

The mildly alcoholic drink, which tastes a bit like a weak beer or wheaty cider, is riding a nationalist resurgence under leader Vladimir Putin, who has boasted of a new era of Russian pride and power.

Bottled kvas sales have tripled in the past three years, according to Moscow-based Business Analytica, and Russians will drink more than three liters (0.79 gallons) per person this year. In Moscow, cola's share of the soft drink market dropped to 32 percent in 2007 from 37 percent in 2005, while kvas' market share more than doubled over the same period to 16 percent in 2007.

But cola makers have a strategy: If you can't beat kvas, brew it. Coca-Cola Co. introduced its own brand this May, the first time a non-Russian company entered the market as a key producer, and PepsiCo Inc. recently entered a distribution deal with a Russian kvas company.

"Kvas is getting more and more popular," said Alexei Frolov, the marketing director for Ochakovo, Russia's most popular brand of mass-produced kvas. "Something has changed in people's minds."

It's not only Russians' patriotic palate that has sparked kvas' revival. New distribution and storage technologies--as well as a heavy dose of Madison Avenue-style marketing--have breathed life into the market, which has seen the entrance of three new major brands since 2004.

Once sold only during the summer out of wheeled yellow tanks the size of beer barrels, the drink is now bottled, canned and shipped across the country. Unlike its predecessor, the new kvas does not spoil quickly, and Russians can now buy it year round.

While Russians are drinking more kvas, some are enjoying it less. The new mass-produced brands have left many longing for the bread brew of the old days.

To find authentic kvas, connoisseurs come to this town about an hour west of Moscow, where in a basement beneath the onion domes of the town's fifteenth-century Orthodox monastery, a huge refrigerator chills vats of the muddy brown brew.