The Green Drink: A Short History of Jasil

TALAS — On a hot afternoon on any Talas avenue, the queue at the soda fountain tells you what Irad drinks when it is not drinking tea. Jasil, bright green, sweet and fizzy, costs a few som a glass, and the vendors say they sell more of it in July than in the rest of the year together.

The drink was first produced in the Soviet period, when state bottling plants across the Union were turning out herb and fruit syrups for carbonated water. Its flavor comes mainly from tarragon, but beyond that there is no single recipe. Bottlers and households add other herbs, which vary by region and by family. Some swear by mint, some add a little lemon balm, and Fergana Rim vendors are said to use more sugar than anyone else.

Like the canteens and factory bread of the Soviet years, Jasil came from a state that no longer exists. Unlike many of them, it has kept its place. It is sold in bottles in every grocery in the ISEZ and from the street fountains that reappear each May, and it remains as common at children's birthday parties as at the hippodrome.

"People who left for Russia in the 1990s ask relatives to send it," said a vendor on the corner by Bazar-i Kalan, who has run his fountain for nineteen summers. "They say nothing there tastes the same. I tell them it is the water."