Whether you’re enjoying popcorn, Mexican snacks, or just treating yourself, soda is the perfect drink. But can you imagine one that tastes like banana and vanilla?
Trying this beverage is possible, as we’re talking about Sidra Pino, a Mexican soda so innovative that it was invented long before Coca-Cola’s soda recipe was created.
Sidra Pino has a 140-year history, and if you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of this sugary drink, you should know that its main distribution market was Yucatán, where every sip of this banana and vanilla soda evokes a sense of nostalgia.
Who invented Sidra Pino?
The tropical flavors of this Yucatecan soda make perfect sense when you learn the story of Sidra Pino. According to the Museo del Objeto (Museum of the Object), it was invented by José María Pino Rusconni, a young captain.
Once, while at sea, he had the idea to create a new drink using fruits, bananas, and a touch of vanilla, which became a sensation among his sailing ship’s crew.
The creation was so good that he used to prepare it on voyages from the Canary Islands to the port on the Yucatán Peninsula, where he tied up his ships, the Museum adds.
But everything changed for José María Pino when he met a young woman in Ciudad del Carmen. He fell in love with her, left his life at sea, and dedicated himself to starting a family in Mexico.
How did Sidra Pino soda become so popular?
Despite the changes in his life, José Pino continued preparing the drink, now for his family at gatherings, where the banana and vanilla soda was also a big hit.
José María, the former sailor’s son, realized the recipe could be a hit if marketed, so in 1885 he proposed to his father that they bottle the drink and sell it in stores in Campeche and Yucatán.
That’s how they began selling a new soda with an unparalleled flavor, since even at that time the recipe for Coca-Cola, a beverage invented by John Stith Pemberton in 1886, hadn’t yet been created.
The soda was usually sold in three different varieties: barley, mineral water, and black, made with the original recipe, according to the document “Sidra Pino: From Local Identity to Common Good in the Santiago Neighborhood.”
The text states that the latter was always the favorite and was even nicknamed “the champagne of Yucatán,” although they also created new flavors such as tangerine, orange, lemon, and strawberry.
The drinks were made using rustic methods, even employing pedal-powered machines to seal the glass bottles, says Luis Pino Cardeña, José María’s great-grandson, in an interview with the Museo del Objeto (Museum of the Object).
“I saw the old pedal-powered machines my grandfather used to seal the glass bottles, which had a marble to regulate the flow of the soda. They were 8-ounce bottles, ornate, since it wasn’t customary to put labels on them,” he explains.
Furthermore, the soda was distributed using mules, on which the merchandise was placed to take it to the most remote locations for sale.
They also founded the Pino Soda Bottling Company, through which they not only distributed their original drinks but, by 1935, were also selling Coca-Cola.
“Sidra Pino was very well positioned. In the 1930s, Coca-Cola was introduced, which wasn’t a popular soft drink in the region,” says Juan De Dios Rath in an interview with Merida de Zavala.
Luis Pino Cardeña agrees: “People didn’t like the new drink because, although it was also dark, it tasted very different from Sidra Pino.” In 1949, José María Pino died, leaving the company in the hands of his three sons.
And a year later, one of the soft drink company’s most acclaimed products arrived: El Soldado de Chocolate (The Chocolate Soldier), a drink made with powdered milk, cocoa, malt, sugar, and chocolate.
Is Sidra Pino still sold in Mexico?
In 1965, the Pino brothers sold the company to Halim Gáber, a businessman of Lebanese origin who owned it for many years, but problems began in the first decade of the 2000s.
With the influx of more and more sodas, by 2011 the bottling plant had gone bankrupt and was forced to close, despite years of strikes by workers who refused to leave.
It took 14 years for Sidra Pino to return to the market. In early 2025, Gabriel Pino announced that he had taken over his family’s business and that the acclaimed soft drink would once again be available.
“We started looking for a distributor three years ago. This is the return of an iconic soft drink for Yucatán; it’s part of our culture, of Yucatecan traditions,” Gabriel commented in an interview with Tele Yucatán.
Source: elfinanciero
