The story of banta in a Codd neck bottle

February 19, 2019 8:13 AM

Banta is the colloquial term for a peculiar kind of lemon soda sold in the city—packed in distinctive, green-tinged, Codd-neck bottles locked in place by a marble, and embellished with ice of dubious origin and generous quantities of black salt. [Follow the fascinating story behind the scenes by Mefi's Own beijingbrown]
posted by infini (21 comments total)

lime drinks with a hit of salt is always a winner. and what a coincidence, i was just reading about ramune drinks (referenced in the post; ramune is japanised lemonade i'm told).
posted by cendawanita at 8:37 AM on February 19, 2019

Banta sounds delicious and Codd bottles are fascinating; I had never heard of either. Looking forward to the day when some craft brewer discovers the bottles and demand spikes; I would hate to see them disappear, especially before I get the chance to drink from one.
posted by TedW at 9:12 AM on February 19, 2019

Another place you'll find Codd neck bottles, mentioned briefly in the article, is Japan. I saw a Ramune (a brand of lemon soda--it sounds like 'lemonade') in a Japanese restaurant and had to try it out. It is a very inefficient but fun way of sealing a drink. You have to pop a glass ball out if its plug in the neck of the bottle, then the ball remains loose, but still captured in the neck and the drink flows around it to get to the opening.
posted by eye of newt at 9:12 AM on February 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

Down the wiki-rabbit hole on this, learning that the increased competition from Pepsi and Coke came more recently than I'd have imagined - Coke pulled out of India in 1977 when the government demanded it reveal the recipe, only to return in 1993. Pepsi returned in the same year. Then there seems to have been a 2006 ban due to pesticide levels present in them (!).

Great post, thank you.
posted by ominous_paws at 9:19 AM on February 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

The seller mentioned toward the end of the article, Chand Behari (or Bihari), has another write-up here.
posted by TedW at 9:20 AM on February 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you'd like to see a Codd-neck bottle in the US, you can buy Ramune sodas at World Market. My daughter loves them, but as a kid she was always scared to open them herself, so I had to do it for her.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:23 AM on February 19, 2019 [3 favorites]

Also from wiki:
The drink is often sold mixed with lemon juice, crushed ice, chaat masala and kala namak (black salt) as a carbonated variant of popular lemonades shikanjvi or jal-jeera.

Gimme
posted by ominous_paws at 9:23 AM on February 19, 2019 [3 favorites]

If you'd like to see a Codd-neck bottle in the US, you can buy Ramune sodas at World Market.

Amazon sells them too; just ordered an 8-bottle assortment. Doesn't sound as tasty as the banta, but can't wait to check out the bottles!
posted by TedW at 9:30 AM on February 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'd be very interested to try banta. I had a bottle of Ramune last summer in a ramen joint in Cambridge; it was strawberry-flavored and too sweet by half. It was also the first time I had ever seen a Codd bottle and a little confusing at first.
posted by briank at 10:31 AM on February 19, 2019

Sounds interesting, and I'm tempted to try it, but I'm wondering if it's possible that you could get sick due to 'quality control' issues?
Or am I just being a wuss?
posted by BlueHorse at 11:48 AM on February 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

Down the wiki-rabbit hole on this, learning that the increased competition from Pepsi and Coke came more recently than I'd have imagined - Coke pulled out of India in 1977 when the government demanded it reveal the recipe, only to return in 1993.

More here from Atlas Obscura: When India Kicked Out Coca-Cola, Local Sodas Thrived
posted by JoeZydeco at 11:50 AM on February 19, 2019

I had no idea Codd bottles were still in use anywhere. The only time I've ever seen them is when excavating a Victorian rubbish tip looking for interesting bottles etc.

Now I've just checked and discovered that Morrisons stock them in the UK, so I may try my nearest big branch tomorrow.
posted by Fuchsoid at 1:25 PM on February 19, 2019 [3 favorites]

My dad (hi, if you're reading this!) had one of these bottles from his childhood from somewhere in South America, probably in the '60s?, I can't remember where. It was a source of endless fascination for me as a child. As an adult, I encountered Ramune bottles and was/am super excited about seeing this brilliant design still in use. I am pleased to learn it has a name.

I think the one he has is green -- now I *really* wonder what it used to hold!
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:34 PM on February 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

The regular Ramune always tastes faintly of Irn Bru to me: not all that surprising, since one of the founders of the early Japanese soda industry was Scottish.
posted by scruss at 7:52 PM on February 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

Interesting. This was still available in Pakistan in the 60s or 70s, under the same name. My parents recall it from their childhood. Banta (pronounced bun-ta) in Punjabi and Urdu-Hindi means marble, so one can see why the bottles remain the same. The drink is named after the containers, they are the brand.
posted by tavegyl at 8:09 PM on February 19, 2019 [6 favorites]

I grew up drinking Ramune as an occasional treat. I liked to break the bottle and get the marble out to add to my marble collection as a child. Probably the only time that my dad allowed me to break something on purpose!
posted by tipsyBumblebee at 9:16 PM on February 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

It is a very inefficient but fun way of sealing a drink. You have to pop a glass ball out if its plug in the neck of the bottle, then the ball remains loose, but still captured in the neck and the drink flows around it to get to the opening.
Not that inefficient if you consider that the entire bottle can be sterilized and reused. Less wasteful than regular glass bottles where the caps must be thrown away and much less wasteful of course than plastic bottles and cans. I've thought for a while that these kinds of bottles were due for a hipster comeback.

They were common growing up in Tamil Nadu as mentioned in the article, where they were known either as goli soda (goli = marble in Tamil) or paneer soda (paneer is the name for the rose essence used in them in the South).

I have hardly ever drunk them - one reason was that hygiene really was pretty dubious. The other is that I was not really a fan of rose flavor in my fizzy drinks. (I was a much bigger fan of another local soft drink - Bovonto - with a sickeningly sweet grape flavor). But they were absolutely ubiquitous in the streets and I would be very sorry to see them go. They seem ripe for someone to take over the entire process, produce them hygienically and sell them to upwardly mobile Indians nostalgic for their childhood.
posted by peacheater at 12:17 AM on February 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

I didn’t realise these bottles were so unusual - I see them all over the GTA in variety stores from both Asian and South-East Asian suppliers. Multi-culturalism FTW.
posted by saucysault at 4:32 AM on February 20, 2019

I get a laugh when someone uses an abbreviation or term that seems very common to them, so they neglect to explain it, because why would they? My first thought of GTA was Grand Theft Auto, and the popularity of this game means that all Google search results point to this unless you have a lot of time to go through pages of search results. A part of me considers the possibility that there are Asian suppliers of Codd bottles in the Grand Theft Auto game. But that can't be right. ;)
posted by eye of newt at 12:54 AM on February 22, 2019

I did some more searching this morning and I think I've figured it out--GTA probably means Greater Toronto Area. I was guessing the A stood for Asia, but couldn't figure out what the other letters could mean.

@saucysault:
When you see you 'see them' all over GTA, what do you mean by 'them'? Are you talking about Ramune or Banta or something else entirely?
posted by eye of newt at 9:35 AM on February 22, 2019

I meant the pop bottles with the marbles. I’ve seen several different bottle shapes/brands but I don’t know what the specific brands were. I’ll make a habit of checking now and seeing what brands we have in GTA

People living in the GTA were really hoping Rockstar would make a GTA:GTA game, especially in the crazy Rob Ford era. Sadly, it appears they will not
posted by saucysault at 4:18 PM on February 24, 2019 [1 favorite]