Drinks in Mexico

As you would expect, there were plenty of choices for drinks in Mexico, so let’s get started with some soft drinks. Not much to say about these except that seeing as we had to buy bottled water anyway (tap water is not drinkable in Mexico), then we decided that we would buy flavoured water instead of fizzy drinks – hence the large amount of flavoured water in this gallery…

Lemonade flavoured mineral water by Peñafiel. Peñafiel was founded in Mexico in 1928, but is now owned by a giant U.S. corporate entity… This was very nice and refreshing (the drink, not the corporate takeover).
‘Sidral Mundet’ is an apple flavoured soft drink dating from 1902 – named after its creator Don Arturo Mundet. Now owned by FEMSA – a giant Mexican corporation.
Ciel – bottled water by Coca Cola. This one is pineapple and ginger flavoured.
Bonafont water by Danone. This one is pineapple and coconut flavoured.
Ades – Soy based drink with Guanabana flavour. Ades was invented in Argentina in 1988 and Ades is an acronym for ‘Alimentos de Semillas” (food from seeds). In the UK it is called ‘Adez’ – COMPLETELY BREAKING the acronym… It’s now owned by Coca Cola…

OK, so let’s talk about some Mexican specialities – first up we have ‘horchata‘. Horchata originates from 13th century Spain, and it is VERY popular in Mexico. It is made from rice milk with cinnamon and vanilla flavouring. We got quite addicted to this stuff – especially when we found out that you could buy it in powdered form from the supermarket and make your own! 🙂

Horchata in a red cup.
DIY Horchata mix in a packet.

Moving on to another fantastic Mexican drink, we come to ‘pozol‘. Pozol is made from fermented corn dough and cacao and it is TOTALLY delicious 🙂 It originates from the Mayan people and is popular in Chiapas province – where we drank it as much as possible…

Pozol de Cacao served in a great big bowl!
Pozol de cacao with ice.

Next up.. hot chocolate! Yes, we love a bit of hot chocolate – and Mexico has a long hot chocolate tradition. But although the hot chocolate in Mexico was quite tasty, it unfortunately could not compete on the level of El Salvador – which undoubtedly has the greatest hot chocolate in the world – yes I’ve said it now… it’s official. We were very fair in our comparison with El Salvador – and tried hot chocolate both from restaurants and by making it ourselves.

Hot chocolate being made ‘live’ for us in a cafe.
Traditional hot chocolate blocks from the market in Campeche.

And finally in the ‘speciality’ section, a quick mention to the ‘chia fresca’ – which is a chia seed lemon/lime type drink. Although chia seeds are now a trendy health food, they actually originate from Mexico and have been consumed there for a long time… and the ‘chia fresca’ is very refreshing indeed…

Chia fresca.

And so last of all we come to coffee…. yes, we do like a bit of nice coffee :-). Mexico actually grows a lot of coffee, as some of the southern provinces have the ideal terrain and climate – but like in lots of places, most of the good stuff is exported. We tried a few different packets of coffee and also had a couple of ‘fancy’ coffees out in cafes – and although not too bad – we never hit the heights of the coffee in Colombia – which I guess is to be expected! Still, compared to a lot of South America it was pretty good…

Cafe Garat – ‘gourmet’ coffee… so it says…. 100% Mexican, but from who knows where….
Alma Jarocha – coffee from Veracruz province.
Cafe Brujula – trendy marketing, not so good coffee…
Chemex coffee in San Cristobal – unfortunately it was average…
Chemex coffee in Oaxaca – the best we had in Mexico.

And so there you have it… what about beer? That will have its own special page…

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