Tatiana and Wayne with their family. A Colombian ingredient that was part of Tatiana's life long before Panela Power is now at the centre of a new family project.

Before anybody told me panela could become a sports drink, it was something my grandmother put on the table. For me, panela belongs to a collection of very Colombian memories: aguapanela in the afternoon, warm and sweet, with cheese or almojábanas while the family sat together; aguapanela with lemon when somebody had a cold and the kitchen somehow knew what to prepare before anyone had asked; and, of course, cyclists. Long before I knew anything about carbohydrates, electrolytes or endurance nutrition, I knew that panela and bocadillo belonged to those people riding bicycles up Colombian mountains, apparently capable of climbing forever.

So when I recently spoke with Tatiana, a Colombian living in New Zealand who is behind a new endurance product called Panela Power, the conversation immediately felt familiar. She was telling me about something new - a sports drink developed in New Zealand and preparing to reach athletes here - while at the centre of the story was an ingredient I had known for most of my life. Migration has a funny way of doing this to ordinary things. Something crosses an ocean with you and suddenly you find yourself explaining why it matters.

For many Colombians, panela belongs first to the kitchen. Aguapanela with cheese, bread or almojábanas is part of a much older story than sports nutrition.

Something Tatiana never needed to discover

Tatiana grew up with panela in Colombia, so for her there was nothing particularly exotic about it. Aguapanela was simply part of life, and when she was doing physical activities she would sometimes drink it with lemon. Her English husband, Wayne, arrived at the ingredient from somewhere completely different. Endurance sport had already been part of his life for years, including Ironman, marathons, cycling and trail running, but an experience during an 80-kilometre ultramarathon through Colombia's Chicamocha Canyon seems to have changed the way he looked at panela. While dealing with the heat and elevation, he was also struggling with gels and bars that were upsetting his stomach, so at the aid stations he began eating pieces of panela to keep taking in carbohydrates during the effort.

Wayne during an endurance race in Colombia. It was during an 80-kilometre ultramarathon through the Chicamocha Canyon that he first tried pieces of panela at the aid stations. Courtesy of Panela Power

I like that part of their story because Tatiana and Wayne were looking at exactly the same food and seeing two different things. For Tatiana it belonged to home, family and something she had consumed naturally in Colombia. Wayne encountered it first as something that simply helped him keep going through a difficult race, and afterwards started looking at it with the curiosity of an endurance athlete. Could panela work differently if it was dissolved in water and adapted to the needs of long physical efforts?

Over the following years they kept experimenting with panela in water, adjusting the idea and testing it through training and major races, including the Boston and Sydney Marathons. They also started sharing it with friends, allowing the idea to move gradually from something they were preparing for themselves towards something other athletes might use too. Over time that process became Panela Power, a Colombian panela-based endurance drink with added sodium, designed to provide carbohydrate during running, cycling, hiking and other endurance activities.

There is another part of the story that I like even more because it happened before anybody was thinking about branding or creating a company. Tatiana once took panela on a bikepacking journey through the entire South Island, from Picton to Bluff. She was relatively new to cycling, had bought a $200 bike and simply packed something familiar from Colombia to help her through the long days. There was no business behind it, no sports-nutrition strategy and no idea that this ingredient might eventually become a product in New Zealand. It was just something she already knew worked for her.

Tatiana at Bluff after bikepacking the South Island from Picton. Panela travelled with her long before there was any idea of turning it into a New Zealand endurance product. Courtesy of Panela Power

That is probably how many foods begin their migration. We don't necessarily carry them because we want to introduce them to another country. We carry them because they make sense to us, and sometimes the new place discovers another reason to appreciate them.

But what exactly is panela?

This is probably the part where some New Zealand readers will need a little explanation, because if you put powdered panela beside several types of sugar on a supermarket shelf, it would be quite reasonable to look at it and think it is simply brown sugar. It isn't quite the same thing. Panela is what food science describes as a non-centrifugal cane sugar: sugarcane juice is concentrated through evaporation rather than undergoing the same centrifugation and refining used to produce conventional white sugar. It remains overwhelmingly carbohydrate, with sucrose as its predominant sugar, together with smaller quantities of glucose and fructose and some other compounds retained through the less-refined production process. Research on panela and other non-centrifugal cane sugars has identified minerals and phenolic compounds alongside those sugars.

I think this distinction is worth explaining because panela sometimes gets placed in that slightly dangerous category where anything described as "natural" can quickly acquire almost magical properties. I don't think we need to do that here, and actually it would make the story less interesting.

Panela is still sugar.

That doesn't make it a bad thing, and particularly in this context it almost misses the point. When somebody is doing endurance sport for hours, carbohydrate is something they are deliberately trying to consume. The interesting question is therefore not whether panela somehow escaped being sugar because it comes from sugarcane, but what kind of carbohydrate source it is, how it has traditionally been consumed and why athletes might find it useful during long physical efforts.

Colombia, in its own way, had been playing with that question long before sports nutrition became an industry.

The cyclists already knew

When Tatiana told me that she remembered Colombian cyclists consuming panela, I immediately knew the image she was talking about. In my memory panela appears beside bocadillo, the dense guava sweet that has accompanied so many cyclists that I suspect a Colombian jersey without at least one piece of bocadillo somewhere inside it might once have looked suspicious.

That collective memory also has a history. When Colombian cyclists first entered the Tour de France in 1983, accounts from that extraordinary adventure remember the team carrying panela and bocadillo among their supplies. Those early Colombian riders, the escarabajos who became famous for climbing, arrived in European cycling with a very different sporting culture behind them, and among the things they brought were foods that had already helped cyclists through long training days in Colombia.

I love that image when I compare it with the world of endurance sport today. An athlete can now walk into a shop and choose from a wall of gels, powders, chews, bars and drinks, with every gram of carbohydrate, sodium and caffeine carefully calculated. Decades ago, a Colombian cyclist climbing through the Andes could simply reach into a jersey pocket and pull out a piece of panela or bocadillo. I am not suggesting that the traditional option is automatically better than modern sports nutrition - modern products provide consistency, portability and much greater control over what an athlete consumes - but humans were trying to solve the same problem long before we had a sophisticated language for describing it: how do I keep putting energy into my body so I can continue moving?

Someone actually studied the aguapanela

Tatiana also mentioned during our conversation that she remembered a study in Colombia about panela and physical activity, so I became curious and went looking for it. There is, in fact, a 2015 master's research project from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia comparing hydration with aguapanela and a commercial hydration drink during submaximal exercise at approximately 2,600 metres above sea level. The project examined variables including oxygen uptake, respiratory quotient, energy expenditure, heart rate and blood pressure.

It is important not to take a small academic study and turn it into a headline saying science has proved aguapanela is better than sports drinks. It didn't. What I find interesting is simply that this relationship between panela and physical exercise, which so many Colombians recognise culturally, eventually became a question somebody considered worth taking into a laboratory.

There is something quite Colombian about that too. We drink something for generations and eventually somebody arrives with a clipboard to ask what exactly is happening.

Behind the cup is a much bigger Colombian story

The story of panela becomes much bigger when we move away from the cycling bottle and return to where it begins. Panela remains an important rural industry in Colombia. According to Colombia's Ministry of Agriculture, in 2022 the country produced 1,053,674 tonnes of panela across 29 departments, with approximately 350,000 families connected to production and 18,473 trapiches, the mills where sugarcane is transformed into panela.

The story begins much earlier than the sports bottle. Panela remains closely connected to rural Colombia and to the families and communities that grow and process sugarcane. Courtesy of Panela Power.

For Colombians, trapiche is another word that carries much more than its dictionary definition. I hear it and I can almost imagine the cane, the mountains, the heat, the steam, the physical labour and that smell of sugarcane juice becoming concentrated. By the time panela arrives at someone's kitchen in Bogotá, Medellín or Cali as a block or a packet of powder, it is easy to forget that behind that very ordinary product there is an enormous rural economy and generations of knowledge about growing and processing sugarcane.

The panela used by Panela Power comes from Colombia through a commercial relationship with Doña Panela. The final endurance product is being made here in New Zealand, but its principal ingredient still begins its journey in Colombia. That gives Panela Power a geography that I find particularly interesting. It is a New Zealand product in one sense, because the idea is being developed here for people doing activities here, but it also carries a very tangible connection with the country where Tatiana and I first learned what panela was without ever needing anyone to explain it.

Panela Power takes Colombian panela into a New Zealand endurance context, combining it with added sodium for long physical efforts. Courtesy of Panela Power.

When ordinary food becomes migrant food

I keep returning to this part of the story because it feels familiar to me as a Colombian who has been living in New Zealand for years. Migration changes food, or maybe more precisely it changes the conversation around food. Things that never required an explanation at home suddenly require paragraphs. You find yourself describing an arepa, explaining why Colombians put cheese inside hot chocolate, trying to convince somebody that a good empanada is much more serious than a snack, or standing in a kitchen explaining that the brown block in the cupboard is not there because you recently discovered an alternative sweetener on Instagram.

At home, it is simply panela.

When another culture encounters the ingredient without all of the memories attached to it, however, new questions become possible. Wayne did not grow up with a grandmother serving aguapanela in the afternoon, so he could look at exactly the same product through the experience of someone who spends hours running and cycling and ask whether it could be useful for endurance. That question does not remove Tatiana's relationship with panela or replace the Colombian tradition behind it. It simply adds another chapter.

I think this is one of the most interesting things that can happen to food through migration. An ingredient does not need to remain frozen in the exact form in which our grandparents consumed it in order to remain connected with where it came from. Of course I want aguapanela to continue sitting beside an almojábana, because that combination deserves a very long life, but I also enjoy the idea that the same panela can travel far enough to end up inside a cyclist's bottle in Glenorchy.

Colombia to Glenorchy

On 17 October 2026, cyclists will gather in Glenorchy for the Glenorchy Grind, a grassroots cycling event based at the head of Lake Whakatipu. The 2026 edition offers 57 km, 86 km and 160 km routes; the longest covers around 1,900 metres of vertical gain and more than 20 river crossings.

Tatiana told me that Panela Power will be one of the sponsors of the event and that the Glenorchy Grind will also be the first occasion when their drink is offered publicly as a sports product. When I stop and think about the journey behind that moment, I find it quite extraordinary. Sugarcane is grown in Colombia and transformed into panela, the ingredient travels to New Zealand, and a Colombian woman who grew up drinking it shares that familiarity with an English endurance athlete. He first encounters panela as pieces at an aid station during a difficult race in Colombia, then back in New Zealand they begin experimenting with it in water, testing it through training, the Boston and Sydney Marathons and other long efforts, and eventually sharing it with friends. Years later, cyclists in Glenorchy will ride through gravel roads, river crossings and mountains carrying a drink whose central ingredient began on the other side of the Pacific.

Inside that bottle there is obviously a commercial product, but there are also fragments of several stories: Colombian farmers, generations of people drinking aguapanela, the old relationship between panela and Colombian cycling, Tatiana travelling from Picton to Bluff with panela on a $200 bike, Wayne trying to solve a problem during an ultramarathon and, at least for me, memories of my grandmother putting a warm drink on the table.

That is a long way for something so ordinary to travel.

A different kind of export

We normally talk about migration through people, visas, jobs and demographics, but culture often moves through much smaller things. It travels in recipes, ingredients, music, expressions, ways of making coffee and those things somebody puts in a suitcase because they are not completely sure they will find them at the other end. Sometimes they remain mostly within migrant communities, while other times they slowly enter the culture around them and become familiar to people who have no connection with the place where they originated. Occasionally they move even further and find themselves somewhere nobody originally imagined.

I don't know what Panela Power will become. It is a small family business entering a sports-nutrition market where athletes already have many options, and ultimately the people running, riding and hiking will decide whether the product works for them. That uncertainty actually makes the story more interesting to me, because I don't need to know whether Panela Power will become a large company to find value in what Tatiana and Wayne are doing. Their story already tells us something about the way knowledge, food and ideas can travel between cultures.

Colombia did not invent endurance sport, and New Zealand certainly does not need Colombians to teach it how to spend unreasonable quantities of time running, riding bicycles, hiking up mountains or voluntarily crossing twenty rivers in a single day. New Zealand seems to have developed that particular enthusiasm perfectly well on its own. But Colombia does have something interesting to bring into that world: an ingredient generations of families have consumed at home, hundreds of thousands of people are connected with producing, and cyclists were carrying long before brightly coloured gels became normal.

That, to me, is a much more interesting way of thinking about cultural exchange. We do not have to place our traditions behind glass and protect them from ever changing. They can remain connected with where they came from while being alive enough to find a new place, another audience and sometimes an entirely different purpose.

When I think about panela, I will probably always return first to my grandmother's table - aguapanela, cheese, almojábanas and family around it. Tatiana will have her own collection of memories, while Wayne sees something else in the same ingredient: long races, cycling bottles, carbohydrates and the practical problem of keeping a body moving for hours. Those relationships with panela are different, but they don't need to compete with each other.

And this October, somewhere around Glenorchy, a cyclist may take a drink from a bottle containing something that would have looked completely ordinary in a Colombian kitchen. The mountains will be different, the language around the table has changed, and the panela has found a completely new job.

But the panela made the journey.

Sources & further reading

Wayne and Tatiana / Panela Power
Direct conversation and correspondence with Zealanding, October 2026. This is the primary source for Wayne first trying panela pieces in the Chicamocha Canyon, the Picton-to-Bluff journey, Boston and Sydney Marathons, their experimentation process and the Glenorchy Grind launch.

Panela Power - Our Story
Background on Tatiana, Wayne, their endurance experience, the South Island bikepacking story and the development of Panela Power. Panela Power - Our Story

Panela Power - Natural Endurance Fuel
Product information and current formulation description. Panela Power

Colombia Ministry of Agriculture - Panela sector
Source for 2022 Colombian production, families involved and number of trapiches. Colombia Ministry of Agriculture - panela sector

Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Aguapanela and exercise study, 2015
Research comparing aguapanela and a commercial hydration drink during submaximal exercise in Bogotá. Universidad Nacional de Colombia research record

Journal of Food Composition and Analysis - Non-centrifugal cane sugar
Review of the nutritional and functional components of panela and other non-centrifugal cane sugars. Research on non-centrifugal cane sugar

Food Chemistry - Chemical characteristics of panela
Research on the sugar and phenolic composition of panela. Chemical characteristics of panela

El País - Colombia's first Tour de France team
Historical account of the Colombian team's 1983 Tour de France participation and its use of panela and bocadillo. Panela, bocadillo and the 1983 Tour de France

Glenorchy Grind
Official 2026 event information, courses and schedule. Glenorchy Grind 2026