Ireland through the centuries has produced it's fair share of legendary drinks. We've all heard the folk stories about poitín, whiskey and Guinness but none of these come close to the school yard urban legends surrounding the most mythical of all Ireland's drinks - Red Lemonade.
To begin with, even the origins of red lemonade are shrouded in mystery. Several soft drink manufacturers claim to be the originators of our national soft drink (or 'minerals' as we like to call them in Ireland) but no one can seem to give an answer as to why lemonade became red in Ireland while remaining colourless in the rest of the world. What can be agreed upon is that this unique drink emerged at the end of the 19th century and became a staple of many of the mineral water factories that had sprung up in every large town in the country. It wasn't long before whiskey drinkers discovered that red lemonade worked perfectly as a mixer to their favourite spirit meaning that the children's weekend treat now became one of the pub's mandatory bottles.
Anyone who went to school in Ireland in the 90's will have heard the urban legend which explained that the reason you could only get red lemonade in Ireland was because the red colour additive used was carcinogenic and had been banned everywhere else. And to make matters worse, the EU dictators in Brussels were now going to ban our beloved red lemonade! Thankfully, this all turned out not to be true and the Irish people's undying affection for the drink was untainted.
