Its first ever alcoholic drink was launched earlier in the week by Coca Cola in Japan. This drink is a fizzy, lemon-flavoured mixture which has spirits. The aim of this new launch is to take advantage of the increasing popularity of “chuhai” alcopops hat are believed to be especially most liked by young women.

According to Coca Cola Japan President Jorge Garduno, the experimentation with alcoholic drinks that the company is engaged with in Japan is “unique” for the 125 year history of the company despite the fact that company had earlier dabbled with the idea of manufacturing wine and setting up a wine business in the 1970s.

The new alcohol based drinks that Coca Cola has started to market in the southern Kyushu region of Japan has called Lemon-Do and has three variants where each has three, five and seven per cent alcohol in each separately.

The cost of e 350-millilitre can has bene put at 150 yen ($1.40).

“This is a pilot project in the region which has a sizable market,” Masaki Iida, spokesman for Coca-Cola’s Japanese unit, told the media. But because of the fact that the recipe for the drink is something that the company will not part ways with therefore he refused to reveal the kind of spirit that was used in the drink.

According to the website of the company, the idea for the creation of this alcohol containing drink was developed by the company after its product developers visited Japanese-style “izakaya” pubs, where the very high popularity of lemon-flavored drinks was noticed by them.

A range of flavours such as grape, strawberry, kiwi and white peach is available for drinkers for the popular “chuhai” drinks that typically is comprised of vodka or a distilled, grain-based spirit called “shochu” as the alcohol base.

That form of drinks is especially popular among young women and those drinks come in three ranges of alcohol content or alcohol strength from three per cent to nine per cent.

But this is a market that is already well established and there are a number of players such as Suntory, Kirin and Asahi which have popular brands of such drinks in the market and therefore the market segment that Coca Cola is entering into is already a competitive one.

Additionally., the company and its president has already made it clear that the alcohol mixed drinks would not be made or offered by Coca Cola outside of Japan and said that the company has no plans to launch the “Lemon-Do” anywhere else but Japan which is a damper for many enthusiasts elsewhere outside of the country.

This strategy of the company however is being analyzed as a tactic by the global leader of soft drinks to diversify from the usual sodas and aerated soft drinks that it offers because of a rising trend among consumers in the US and other developed markets of avoiding sweetened drinks because of rising health concerns and as some countries impose a sugar tax for such sweetened drinks.

(Adapted form TimesofIndia.com)