Calpico: Named in Sanskrit, Born on Tanabata, Renamed for English

Calpico is the cloudy sweet-tart drink that tastes like childhood to anyone who grew up in Japan. It is also one of the most heavily loaded bottles on our menu, in the sense that almost every detail on it is a deliberate reference to something.

Inner Mongolia, and a Bowl of Sour Milk

Mishima Kaiun was born in a temple in Osaka and worked as an English teacher. In the early twentieth century he travelled in Inner Mongolia, and on a long punishing journey he became ill.

Herders gave him a bowl of fermented sour milk. He recovered, and he was struck by both the taste and what it appeared to do for him.

He came home and spent years working on lactic acid fermentation, eventually isolating the culture the drink is built on. In 1919 he launched it as Japan's first commercially produced lactic acid beverage.

The culture has been kept alive and propagated continuously ever since, which is the same principle as an unagi shop's tare pot: nothing is ever started from scratch, and what you are drinking descends directly from the original.

The Name Is Sanskrit

Cal is calcium, which was added to the drink.

Pis comes from sarpis, a Sanskrit word appearing in Buddhist texts for a refined stage of dairy. Mishima's temple background is showing here. There is a hierarchy of five dairy stages in the sutras, ending in daigo, the finest, and a higher term than sarpis was considered first. Sarpis won because it sounded better in Japanese.

So the drink is named for calcium plus a Buddhist scriptural term for cultured milk, which is a considerable amount of intent for a soft drink.

Born on the Seventh of July

It launched on 7 July 1919, which is Tanabata, the star festival.

That is why the packaging has polka dots. They are the Milky Way, the river of stars that separates the two lovers in the Tanabata legend and that they cross once a year.

The original pattern from 1922 was white dots on blue, a night sky. It was flipped in 1953 to the blue dots on white that everyone recognises now.

Why It Is Calpico Here

In Japan it is Calpis. Outside Japan it is generally Calpico, and the reason is that Calpis said out loud in English sounds unfortunately like cow piss.

It is a rare case of a rename that was clearly the right call.

What It Actually Tastes Like

Milky and clean, sweet with a real lactic sourness underneath. That sourness is the part that makes it work, because it stops the sweetness sitting on your tongue.

It is normally sold as a concentrate that you dilute yourself, which means the strength is your decision.

How We Use It

On its own, cold, and it is one of the few things on our list that works for everyone at the table regardless of age.

It also mixes unusually well, because lactic acid does something to spirits that citrus cannot. Calpico with shochu is standard in Japan. With vodka or yuzu liqueur it goes somewhere between a sour and a creamsicle, and it goes well with anything fried or spicy.