India Uva

India is a generic brand equivalent from Puerto Rico. While there is little on the company website regarding soda brewing and bottling, this particular bottle was manufactured by Compañía Cervecera de Puerto Rico, best known for it's beer and Malta India.

It smells of Dimetap cough syrup. It's also rather flat, but that may owe more to its age since plastic bottles are permeable to gasses. Other than that it's an typical grape drink, with nothing remarkable about it. You could probably mix soda water with one of those cheap grape drinks in the little grenade like packaging kids have in the summer and get something similar.

Malta India

This is the second "malta" drink I've tried out. The first being Vitamalt, here. The genre of malta drinks sits on the fine line between beers and sodas. They often called "children's beer" or "young beer" and yet they generally considered sodas. Though they are brewed like a old-fashioned soda or beer, the primary difference is that maltas are not fermented so they are naturally free of alcohol.

Malta India comes from the Compania Cervecera de Puerto Rico brewery. Founded in 1937 by the Valdez brothers, they began selling Malta India in 1939. These malta beverages are popular in the Caribbean where they are often served over ice or with evaporated milk mixed in. 

Personally, I find the aroma very unappealing. It's something like a molasses and alfalfa soup smell with the lingering hint of a box of dry Grape Nuts cereal. For those with any belief that this would taste like beer, you'd be sorely mistaken. It's dark colored and tastes repulsively like cold gerbil food pellets. I cannot fathom how people might enjoy drinking this other than knowing that it contains vitamins beneficial to health. I have to recommend steering clear of this.

Coco Rico Coconut Soda

While I haven't been able to find much on the history of this drink I can tell you that it is made by a family owned business in Puerto Rico, but which I found on a pilgrimage to an asian supermarket.

It has a light carbonation level and a practically imperceptible coconut scent. It's clear in color and has a very strong coconut flavor with a sugary sweet finish. I tried this out of the novelty since I do not like coconut in food, however this is not entirely intolerable. I imagine that if you eat coconut products often you would like this, but it isn't for me.