If ever you wanted to understand the power and importance of branding, you might do worse than consider my relationship with Royal Crown cola. The first time I encountered the brand was in Prague in 1993. I was 21, and was doing my round Europe trip with my friend Gareth. For reasons that are far too long to go into here we were eschewing the normal trains in favour of Business Class on Lufthansa – and we were waiting for a flight to Berlin in the International Departure lounge at the airport (the niceties of travelling at the front were lost on us at this stage, so we didn't realise we could be sipping free G&Ts in the business lounge).

Prague was at this time at the heart of the new Europe after the fall of the Warsaw Pact regimes in the late 80s and early 90s, and was catching up fast. The place was full of sub-standard McDonalds restaurants, backpackers and people all too willing to separate you from your holiday money, your bags, your dignity or worse. Luckily we'd just about escaped all that – but again that's too long and painful a story to go into here.

The departure lounge was dotted with Royal Crown vending machines. RC cola hadn't (and indeed hasn't) got as far as the UK, so I'm afraid I assumed it was a knock-off Eastern European brand (well let's be honest: Royal Crown DOES sound kind of cheesy).

And that was the last I thought of it until years later, when I read either a book or a newspaper article or something else that happened to mention Royal Crown cola and how it knocks the likes of Pepsi and Coke into a cocked hat.

Being something of a soft drink fan, I rued the day I passed up the chance to taste one of what I now knew to be a great American cola. And since it STILL hasn't got as far as the UK (despite now being owned by Cadbury Schweppes of the UK), I'd never had the chance to taste it.

Until yesterday, when I was wondering round my local Monoprix and I spotted it: a four pack of Royal Crown Premium draft cola, sitting there winking at me. I had to have it, so I did.

And I'm delighted to say it was the second tastiest cola I've ever had. The first was Fentimans, but that's a real premium brand and not really a fair comparison. Much more complex in flavour than the bigger brands, it had a real kola nut flavour – almost like a root beer. So all in all a good buy.

So there's the thing. The product was the same, and it was a big brand and a tasty cola both in Prague in 1993 and Paris in 2004. the only thing that had changed was the ambience (Monoprix tends to stock good stuff) and my knowledge of the brand. And it turned the drink from something I wouldn't go near into something I had to have.