Vernors
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| Type | Ginger Ale |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Dr Pepper Snapple Group |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Introduced | 1866 |
| Color | Golden |
| Variants | Diet Vernors |
Vernors is a ginger flavored soft drink and the oldest surviving ginger ale brand in the United States. It was created in 1866 by James Vernor, a Detroit pharmacist.
Although Vernors is the oldest surviving ginger ale sold in the United States, there were a number of brands of ginger ale, ginger soda, and ginger beer sold in commerce prior to 1866.
According to company legend, prior to the start of the American Civil War, while a clerk at the Higby & Sterns drugstore in Detroit, James Vernor experimented with flavors in an attempt to duplicate a popular ginger ale imported from Dublin, Ireland. When Vernor was called off to serve in the war, he stored the syrup base of 19 ingredients, including ginger, vanilla and other natural flavorings, in an oaken cask. Vernor joined the 4th Michigan Cavalry on August 14, 1862 as a hospital steward, was promoted to second lieutenant on September 20, 1864, and was discharged on July 1, 1865. 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.
In a 1936 interview, however, James Vernor Jr., admitted that the formula was not developed by his father until after the war was over. This was confirmed in a 1962 interview with former company president, James Vernor Davis. According to the 1911 trademark application on "Vernor's" as a name for ginger ale and extract, Vernor's ginger ale first entered commerce in 1880, not 1866.
Vernor opened a drugstore of his own on Woodward Avenue, on the southwest corner of Clifford Street and sold his ginger ale at its soda fountain. City by city, Vernor sold bottling franchises, with operators of those franchises required to adhere strictly to the recipe. In 1896, Vernor closed his drugstore and opened a soda fountain closer to the city center, on Woodward Avenue south of Jefferson Avenue, near the ferry docks on the Detroit River to concentrate on the ginger ale business alone. Initially, Vernors was only sold via soda fountain franchises. The early Vernors soda fountains featured ornate plaster, lighting and ironwork featuring a "V" design, examples of which still exist, such as at the Halo Burger restaurant in Flint, Michigan. Later Vernors was bottled for home consumption.
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