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While scanning the Whole Foods cold beverage display for some illy issimo, I came across a dark brew wrapped in a gold label with a Soviet-ish font and a pretty illustration of a field of wheat and a bird.  Krushka & Bochka Kvass – a fermented soda from the motherland.

Now we’ve all learned a lot about the Russians lately. That they’re still trying to gather secrets about how we live (even though there are no real travel restrictions and, you know, there’s the internet if they’re really lazy); that they have a town that’s an exact replica of Chevy Chase, Md., to train spies in (did they choose Chevy Chase because they’re fans of “Spies Like Us”?); and that no matter how much cleavage she shows, you shouldn’t trust a woman who dyes her hair red every week and sounds slightly foreign after a few glasses of vodka.

What hasn’t been very well publicized is that they seem to be very fond of a soda made of wort concentrate. Or that’s what the label of Kvass would have you believe. “Kvass has been a Russian staple of refreshment for centuries, enjoyed by czars and peasants alike. Pushkin describes how Russians believed they needed Kvass like the air for living.” When not composing thousand-page literary works or fomenting revolution, Pushkin kicked back and enjoyed a nice cold glass of fermented soda. You can’t buy an endorsement like that.

Back to the wort concentrate. It’s rye flour, fermented rye malt and barley flour. To that they add some sugar. And that’s pretty much it. Kvass is described as “[m]alty with a sweet finish and light sparkle, Kvass is truly a thirst quencher like no other.” The reality? A soda that tastes like the raisins that get stuck at the bottom of a box formed a collective that meant to work toward the common good but somehow they’ve just grown hardened and weary.

Na zdorovye!