Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan has introduced another hard seltzer in Japan. Nomel’s, which is “lemon” spelled backwards, is a hard lemonade blended in the three flavors of Original, Bitter Sour, and Sour Sour Sour.
The Original and Sour Sour Sour flavors are 5% ABV, while the Bitter Sour drink is 7% ABV.
Coke has shown success in Asia with Lemon-Dou hard seltzer, and recently showed signs of intent to sell the product in the US.
Nomel’s logo is not only backwards lemon, but also has a backwards “L.” It’s an English word on a Japanese product, taken advantage of the popularity of hard seltzers in the United States. But it’s still tricky to pronounce in other dialects. According to Asian news service soranews24.com, “Adding further linguistic weirdness is that since the Japanese language lacks an L sound and can’t have syllable that end in consonants other than N, if you’re asking for a can of Nomel’s in Japanese it’s pronounced ‘Nomeruzu,’ which sounds very similar to the word nomeru, which means drinkable.”
The Original variety includes 20% real fruit juice, giving the finished product a lemony hue.
The Sour Sour Sour is 14% juice, 5% ABV, and includes yuzu flavoring. The yuzu fruit is tart and fragrant, similar to grapefruit, with notes of mandarin orange.
Bitter Sour comes in at a whopping 7% ABV (strong by Japanese canned beverage alcohol precedence) and 8% juice.
In 2017, Coca‑Cola West Co., Ltd. and Coca‑Cola East Japan Co., Ltd. integrated their businesses to establish Coca‑Cola Bottlers Japan, the largest Coca‑Cola bottler in Japan, serving a population of more than 100 million people. The Coca-Cola Company retained 19% ownership as of December 31, 2020.
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