Bambus or Kalimotxo

In yesterday’s post about situation puzzles I mentioned Bambus and that I would explain today what Bambus is. Bambus is just basically red wine and Coca/Pepsi Cola mixed. Wouldn’t you believe that Wikipedia has an entry on this, here is what they have about the origin of the name.

Calimocho (from the Basque Kalimotxo) is a drink consisting of approximately 50% red wine and 50% cola-based soft drink. Alternative names include Rioja libre (from "Rioja", and "Cuba Libre"), kali, motxo. In Chile the drink is known as jote (Chilean Spanish for the Black Vulture), and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia, Croatia and other former Yugoslav republics of it is known as bambus (meaning bamboo) and musolini (as in Benito Mussolini). In the Czech Republic it is known as houba, and in Hungary as Vadász (meaning hunter) or vörösboros kóla or shortly VBK. In Mozambique and South Africa it is known as Catemba. In Germany it is called Korea.

Now I have never heard where the name came from or if it even comes from bamboo, I did hear of musolini and if I recall correctly then musolini is made with red wine and Fanta not Coke. The reason that people drink this is because it is relatively cheap; all you need is some crappy wine and some soda. You certainly would not use Opus One to make this drink. In the US I have made this drink several times for my friends and they are all surprised by the sweetness of the drink, I have yet to hear from a person who did not like this drink.

There is also a white wine version of this drink; instead of Coke you would use Ginger Ale or Sprite/7UP. This also taste pretty good….and again you would not use Grgich Hills Chardonay or Gavi de Gavi La Scolca for this but something much cheaper.
There are also these variations:
Diesel (Coca Cola + beer)
Submarine (drop a shot of whiskey in a beer)
Čiket (Brandy/Cognac with Coca Cola)

In Holland they have something similar but instead of wine they use beer. So beer with 7UP is called Sneeuwwitje (Snow White). There is also a drink named Kopstoot; this is beer with Jenever (Dutch gin). Usually you drink the gin first and then the beer; there is a version of this drink where you put the glass of gin inside the glass of beer. This version is called duikboot (U-boat)…you have to be careful with this because there is a possibility that the glass inside the beer glass will hit your teeth