Coca-Cola taps into nostalgia with fruit-flavored sodas

California Raspberry and Georgia Peach roll out after taste tests.

Coca-Cola is going back to its roots with two new artisanal sodas. Coca-Cola Georgia Peach and Coca-Cola California Raspberry hit grocery stores, restaurants and bars across the country last week.

Although the Atlanta-based brand has been moving away from full-sugar beverages with recent rebranding efforts such as Coke Zero Sugar, the specialty sodas mark the company’s effort to get a piece of the popular craft soda segment. It is the brand’s first flavor innovation since Vanilla Coke hit the market in 2002.

“Specialty sodas are particularly appealing to people who enjoy discovering crafted flavors and who have a desire to try curated food and beverage experiences,” said Lillian Norton, senior brand manager, CocaCola Innovation in a statement. “We see an opportunity to make more of a full portfolio play in

this space with these new locally inspired flavors.”

Coca-Cola executives describe the new sodas as a modern twist on the old days when Coca-Cola was mixed and poured by hand at soda shops. Soda-shop servers would experiment by mixing in flavors like cherry or vanilla, which appealed to consumers in local or regional markets. Those experiments faded in 1932 when fountain dispensers arrived on the scene and automated the process of mixing the base syrup and carbonated water.

In taste tests, more than 9,000 consumers sipped 30 mostly fruit-inspired flavors of CocaCola. Georgia Peach and California Raspberry were the top choices.

COCA-COLA Coca-Cola Georgia Peach and California Raspberry were launched last week.