The Legendary Adonko: An Obroni’s Perspective

Ghana is blessed with eternal sunshine, delicious food and extended peace. So as an obroni, I wonder why Ghanaians made life hard for themselves by inventing the most preposterous drink imaginable: Adonko. Sometimes I think that this drink speaks to mankind's darkest urges: a primal desire to self-implode, and to watch the world burn around you.

Adonko Bitters, the makers of this nightmare-in-a-plastic-bottle, market their flagship product as simply "ethanol." Every other spirit that I have come across belongs to some special family of alcohol: maybe rum, or vodka, or gin. Even Britain's diabolical drink Buckfast – a lethal sweet syrup laced with a dangerous amount of caffeine – describes itself as "tonic wine." Sure, all alcohol is ultimately ethanol, but a name like vodka confers a reassuring kind of legitimacy on whatever is in your glass. The Adonko Bitters marketing team sees the world differently. They gave up on the branding question and just went with “ethanol.”

Speaking of Adonko Bitters' public relations team, I cannot imagine what their bosses said after the infamous Adonko Festival in Kumasi this year. The Adonko Bitters lads had a brainwave - why not organise a music concert, and invite the entire male population of Ghana, and give each guest a personal bottle of Adonko upon entry? For scale, last Saturday I drank about 5% of an Adonko bottle. When I looked in a mirror ten minutes later, all I saw was a ghost staring back at me. So it was thoroughly unsurprising when the Adonko Festival ended in a pile of sleepy Ghanaians, many clutching the last dregs of an Adonko bottle. I learned that this farce became a national scandal. Someone successfully sued Adonko Bitters, and the government banned the drink altogether for three months. It came back, of course, because prohibition never works. And if any drink can survive prohibition, it is Adonko – a drink so deplorable that making it in a bathtub illegally could only improve the taste.

Adonko both is and is not a tourist trap. Some Ghanaians give Adonko the widest berth possible – an entirely reasonable stance to take. Two weeks ago, my Ghanaian friend Terrence admitted that he had never tasted his nation's most notorious product before. We twisted his arm, he took an Adonko, and then he presumably swore never to take advice from obronis again. But other Ghanaians treasure Adonko as a cultural icon, particularly in the hands of foreigners. My obroni friends and I stopped traffic when we walked through Chale Wote with a bottle of Adonko, with Jamestown locals running up from all sides to congratulate us on our wise purchase.

My friends outside Ghana keep asking me the same question: why do you drink Adonko? Well, no-one can argue with the price. I have also heard more dubious claims about the drink, including that Adonko has medicinal properties. My good friend Max believes that Adonko, or “Ghana coffee,” is the ultimate hangover cure. (That claim looks even sillier written down than it sounds every single time Max says it.) It will come as no shock that Max is not in fact a doctor, and the only person who has ever described Max as a doctor is Max. So price and novelty value are just about all that Adonko has going for it.

Adonko is absurd but, for better or worse, it is now an essential brick in my Ghanaian food pyramid. And I am okay with that. Adonko is priced so cheaply that I will take a shot with literally anyone. I have enjoyed Adonko with close friends and total randoms, doctors and market sellers, barmen and construction workers. Words cannot capture the glance exchanged between two Adonko drinkers before taking a shot – a look of solidarity in the face of a fast-approaching train of bad decisions. And I wouldn't trade that little moment for all the designer cocktails in the world.