LONDON: There would not appear to be much to link the rainy northwest of Britain and the searing heat of the vast desert expanses of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf — and even less likely that the link might come in a bottle.
Eighty years ago, an Indian employee of a family firm named Abdulla Aujan & Brothers introduced his bosses to a cordial drink from Britain which, he explained, had become very popular in India, which was then still a British colony.
The drink was a hit with the bosses too, and so began one of the most enduring love affairs between the Gulf region and Britain.
The drink was Vimto, a sugary blend of fruits, berries and secret herbs that was initially sold as a medicinal tonic but is now the beverage of choice in the Middle East, especially during Ramadan. Indeed no self-respecting host would consider not having a jug of thirst-quenching iced Vimto on hand ready for Iftar and suhoor.
Eating dates may be the traditional way to break the fast, and coincidentally dates are a key factor in Vimto’s popularity. When the drink took off in the Middle East the recipe was tweaked to include the fruit which is dear to all Arab hearts.
“The recipe for Vimto produced in the Middle East contains date paste. That commonality of date flavouring really cemented Vimto as the drink of choice,” said Eddie Stableford, who worked on Vimeo branding in the late 1990s and is now innovation director with Wonderstruck Branding Design.
“Many other drinks have come along over the years and there are cheaper colas out there, but Vimto is the product that delivers.
“It’s a sign of quality. It’s been around a long time so it’s familiar and reassuring. And because it’s got a long history there’s a nostalgia factor. It has fond associations for people.”
A cursory search on social media reveals just how deep the Arab attachment to Vimto has become since that first taste in 1928.
“Is it really Ramadan without Vimto?” asked one fan on Twitter, while another posted misty-eyed reminiscences about watching his mother pour Vimto cordial into a jug full of ice in preparation for the end of prayers signalling that Iftar could begin.
While Vimto is popular year-round, sales really go through the roof at Ramadan. In fact almost three quarters of Vimto’s Middle East sales occur during the month of fasting and it has at times proved necessary to restrict customers to two bottles apiece to ensure supplies do not run out.
It is easy to see why. At the end of a long and tiring day without sustenance, the sugar boost in Vimto provides an instant pick-me-up.
Vimto arrived in the Middle East in 1928 but it was invented 20 years earlier by John Noel Nichols, a wholesaler trader of herbs, spices and medicines in Manchester, the northwestern English city that was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution.
He launched his new concoction as Vimtonic, a herbal tonic to give “vim and vigour” to those who drank it, but before long the name was shortened to Vimto. It was registered as a medicine and the cordial could be diluted with hot, cold or soda water. Advertisements from those early years claimed it “builds up the system” and “eliminates that out-of-sorts feeling.”
In the early 1920s, Richard Goodsir, a representative of the Kiwi boot polish company and a friend of John Noel Nichols, took a few samples of Vimto cordial to India with him for local bottling plants to try out. There was a readymade market on hand in the form of British troops, but the Indian population also developed a liking for Vimto and its popularity soon spread to neighboring parts of the British Empire, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma (now Myanmar).
So when Indians began flocking to the Gulf to take up clerical jobs, naturally many of them took some Vimto cordial with them, which is how Abdulla Aujan & Brothers in Saudi Arabia came upon it.
They soon saw its potential. Invented at the height of the anti-alcohol Temperance movement in Britain, it trumpeted its non-alcoholic content, making it both suitable and appealing to Muslim consumers. The company struck a deal to become sole importers and distributors of the cordial.
It was shipped in crates from Salford, just outside Manchester, offloaded in Bahrain and transported around the Arabian peninsula in dhows. In 1979 Aujan & Brothers began producing Vimto under license at a factory in Dammam.
“A member of the Nichols family went out to Saudi Arabia and personally handed over the recipe, which remains a family secret to this day — and yes, the people who know the recipe never travel together,” said Stableford.
Today, Vimto is available in 85 countries and counting, and in 38 out of 40 Muslim countries. But Saudi Arabia is still the biggest non-domestic market, with Vimto-lovers consuming 52 million bottles a year of it in cordial, still (ready-diluted) and fizzy form, although the cordial remains most popular by far.
For the makers of Vimto, success has been sweet indeed — literally doubly so in the Middle East. The Vimto sold there is double concentration to cater to the region’s extra sweet tooth.
The next biggest non-domestic markets are Kuwait and the UAE. Within Saudi Arabia, Vimto has a 90 percent share in the concentrated drinks market.
Even adverts for Vimto — Aujan launch a new campaign each year on Arab satellite TV stations — have achieved cult status.
In the 1990s, Vimto expanded into continental Europe and into confectionery. But the war in Yemen has disrupted distribution there because supply routes are under blockade. No Vimto concentrate was shipped there in December.
Change in the Saudi economy is expected to mean a slowdown in sales this year with profits for 2018 not expected to exceed the low single-digit mark.
On the other hand, UK sales were up nine percent as of November 2017 while revenues in Africa are expected to show a 20 percent increase.
However, Nichols — still the owners of Vimto — say the company was well-prepared for the introduction of tax on sugary drinks in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Regional turmoil notwithstanding, it seems Vimto will continue to keep its customers sweet.
“There’s a lot of choice out there these days but people love Vimto because they know it, they recognize it and they trust it,” said Stableford. “It does exactly what a brand should do. It’s the real deal.”
Vimto: A Saudi love story in a bottle
Vimto: A Saudi love story in a bottle
Nodding off is dangerous. Some animals have evolved extreme ways to sleep in precarious environments
Nodding off is dangerous. Some animals have evolved extreme ways to sleep in precarious environments
- While flying, frigatebirds can sleep with one half of the brain at a time. The other half remains semialert so that one eye is still watching for obstacles in their flight path
- Dolphins can sleep with one half of the brain at a time while swimming. Some other birds, including swifts and albatrosses, can sleep in flight
- Elephant seals sleep during the deepest portions of their dives, when they were below the depths that predators usually patrol
Every animal with a brain needs sleep — and even a few without a brain do, too. Humans sleep, birds sleep, whales sleep and even jellyfish sleep.
Sleep is universal “even though it’s actually very risky,” said Paul-Antoine Libourel, a researcher at the Neuroscience Research Center of Lyon in France.
When animals nod off, they’re most vulnerable to sneaky predators. But despite the risks, the need for sleep is so strong that no creature can skip it altogether, even when it’s highly inconvenient.
Animals that navigate extreme conditions and environments have evolved to sleep in extreme ways — for example, stealing seconds at a time during around-the-clock parenting, getting winks on the wing during long migrations and even dozing while swimming.
For a long time, scientists could only make educated guesses about when wild animals were sleeping, observing when they lay still and closed their eyes. But in recent years, tiny trackers and helmets that measure brain waves — miniaturized versions of equipment in human sleep labs — have allowed researchers to glimpse for the first time the varied and sometimes spectacular ways that wild animals snooze.
“We’re finding that sleep is really flexible in response to ecological demands,” said Niels Rattenborg, an animal sleep research specialist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Germany.
Call it the emerging science of “extreme sleep.”
Chinstrap penguins and their ‘microsleeps’
Take chinstrap penguins in Antarctica that Libourel studies.
These penguins mate for life and share parenting duties — with one bird babysitting the egg or tiny gray fluffy chick to keep it warm and safe while the other swims off to fish for a family meal. Then they switch roles — keeping up this nonstop labor for weeks.
Penguin parents face a common challenge: getting enough sleep while keeping a close eye on their newborns.
They survive by taking thousands of catnaps a day — each averaging just 4 seconds long.
These short “microsleeps,” as Korea Polar Research Institute biologist Won Young Lee calls them, appear to be enough to allow penguin parents to carry out their caregiving duties for weeks within their crowded, noisy colonies.
When a clumsy neighbor passes by or predatory seabirds are near, the penguin parent blinks to alert attention and soon dozes off again, its chin nodding against its chest, like a drowsy driver.
The naps add up. Each penguin sleeps for a total of 11 hours per day, as scientists found by measuring the brain activity of 14 adults over 11 days on Antarctica’s King George Island.
To remain mostly alert, yet also sneak in sufficient winks, the penguins have evolved an enviable ability to function on extremely fractured sleep — at least during the breeding season.
Researchers can now see when either hemisphere of the brain — or both at once — are asleep.
Frigatebirds snooze half their brains in flight
Poets, sailors and birdwatchers have long wondered whether birds that fly for months at a time actually get any winks on the wing.
In some cases, the answer is yes — as scientists discovered when they attached devices that measure brain-wave activity to the heads of large seabirds nesting in the Galapagos Islands called great frigatebirds.
While flying, frigatebirds can sleep with one half of the brain at a time. The other half remains semialert so that one eye is still watching for obstacles in their flight path.
This allows the birds to soar for weeks at a time, without touching land or water, which would damage their delicate, non-water repellent feathers.
Frigatebirds can’t do tricky maneuvers — flapping, foraging or diving — with just one half of their brain. When they dive for prey, they must be fully awake. But in flight, they have evolved to sleep when gliding and circling upward on massive drafts of warm rising air that keep them aloft with minimal effort.
Back at the nest in trees or bushes, frigatebirds change up their nap routine — they are more likely to sleep with their whole brain at once and for much longer bouts. This suggests their in-flight sleeping is a specific adaptation for extended flying, Rattenborg said.
A few other animals have similar sleeping hacks. Dolphins can sleep with one half of the brain at a time while swimming. Some other birds, including swifts and albatrosses, can sleep in flight, scientists say.
Frigatebirds can fly 255 miles (410 kilometers) a day for more than 40 days, before touching land, other researchers found — a feat that wouldn’t be possible without being able to sleep on the wing.
Elephant seals slumber while diving deep
On land, life is easy for a 5,000-pound (2,268-kilogram) northern elephant seal. But at sea, sleep is dangerous — sharks and killer whales that prey on seals are lurking.
These seals go on extended foraging trips, for up to eight months, repeatedly diving to depths of several hundred feet (meters) to catch fish, squid, rays and other sea snacks.
Each deep dive may last around 30 minutes. And for around a third of that time, the seals may be asleep, as research led by Jessica Kendall-Bar of Scripps Institution of Oceanography revealed.
Kendall-Bar’s team devised a neoprene headcap similar to a swimming cap with equipment to detect motion and seal brain activity during dives, and retrieved the caps with logged data when seals returned to beaches in Northern California.
The 13 female seals studied tended to sleep during the deepest portions of their dives, when they were below the depths that predators usually patrol.
That sleep consisted of both slow-wave sleep and REM sleep. During REM, or rapid eye movement sleep, the seals were temporarily paralyzed — just like humans during this deep-sleep stage — and their dive motion changed. Instead of a controlled downward glide motion, they sometimes turned upside down and spun in what the researchers called a “sleep spiral” during REM sleep.
In the span of 24 hours, the seals at sea slept for around two hours total. (Back on the beach, they averaged around 10 hours.)
The winding evolution of sleep
Scientists are still learning about all the reasons we sleep — and just how much we really need.
It’s unlikely that any tired human can try these extreme animal sleep hacks. But learning more about how varied napping may be in the wild shows the flexibility of some species. Nature has evolved to make shut-eye possible in even the most precarious situations.
