Vernors
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Vernors | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Ginger ale |
| Manufacturer | Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages |
| Country of Origin |  United States |
| Introduced | 1866 |
| Variants | Boston cooler |
Detroit's Vernors ginger ale shares the title of America's oldest soft drink with Hires Root Beer. It was invented in 1866 by James Vernor, a Detroit pharmacist.
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[edit] History
In 1862, James Vernor was called off to the American Civil War. According to legend, he left a mixture of ginger, vanilla and spices sitting in an oak cask in a pharmacy he had been working in. After returning from battle four years later, he opened the keg and found the drink inside had been changed by the aging process in the wood. It was like nothing else he had ever tasted, and he purportedly declared it "Deliciously different," which remains the drink's motto to this day. Its current slogan is "Barrel Aged, Bold Taste!™". The apostrophe in the name "Vernor's" was dropped in the late 1950s.[1]
Vernors is a golden ginger ale with a pungent flavor, more like a ginger beer. This style was common before Prohibition when the less flavorful pale ginger ale became popular as an alcoholic mixer. While Michiganders who grew up with it tend to like it, many other Americans are suspicious of it, as it doesn't taste like a "typical" ginger ale.
In the past, Vernors had a reputation of being highly carbonated, so much so that drinking it from a glass would sometimes make one sneeze or cough from the bubbles it would give off. Some people considered Vernors (or Vernors with milk) a folk remedy for stomachache.
The Vernor family owned the company until 1966 when they sold it to an investment group. The company was next acquired by American Consumer Products and then by United Brands before being purchased by A&W Beverages in 1987. A&W was later purchased by Cadbury Schweppes.
[edit] Availability
Vernors was not distributed nationally until the late 1980s. Previously the drink was only distributed within a few hundred miles of Detroit, with particular popularity in Michigan, western New York, Chicago, and Southern Ontario, but it is now found throughout the United States. It is also popular in Florida, which has large numbers of retired Metro Detroiters. Vernors has also been a popular choice of those flying Horizon Air[citation needed] as it is stocked on all of their flights and has recently been introduced in Anchorage, Alaska.
[edit] Detroit menu items that include Vernors
A Boston cooler is an ice cream soda drink made from Vernors and vanilla ice cream, named not after Boston, where Vernors is practically unknown, but after Detroit's Boston Boulevard, where it was supposedly invented.
[edit] References
- The Vernor's Story : From Gnomes to Now, Lawrence L. Rouch, ISBN 0-472-06697-8
[edit] External links
- Vernors page from Cadbury Schweppes web site
- A Vernors Fansite [2]
- Recipe for Detroit Egg Cream
- Snack foods and pop, Detroit style
- Vernor's Collectors Club [3]
