Vernor's
Encyclopedia
Ginger ale
Ginger ale is a carbonated soft drink flavored with ginger. Dr. Thomas Cantrell, an American apothecary and surgeon, claimed to have invented ginger ale and marketed it with beverage manufacturer Grattan and Company. Grattan embossed the slogan "The Original Makers of Ginger Ale" on its bottles...
is America's oldest surviving soft drink
Soft drink
A soft drink is a non-alcoholic beverage that typically contains water , a sweetener, and a flavoring agent...
. It was created in 1866 by James Vernor
James Vernor
James Vernor, Sr. was an American pharmacist and druggist who invented Vernor's ginger ale in 1866.-Biography:...
, a Detroit pharmacist
Pharmacist
Pharmacists are allied health professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use...
.
History
Although Vernors is the oldest surviving ginger ale sold in the United States, there were a number of brands of ginger ale and ginger beer sold in commerce prior to 1866.According to company legend, prior to the start of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, while a clerk at the Higby & Sterns drugstore
Drugstore
Drugstore is a common American term for a type of store centrally featuring a pharmacy. Drugstores sell not only medicines, but also miscellaneous items such as candy, cosmetics, and magazines, as well as light refreshments....
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
Ginger
Ginger is the rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale, consumed as a delicacy, medicine, or spice. It lends its name to its genus and family . Other notable members of this plant family are turmeric, cardamom, and galangal....
, vanilla
Vanilla
Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla, primarily from the Mexican species, Flat-leaved Vanilla . The word vanilla derives from the Spanish word "", little pod...
and other natural flavorings, in an oak cask. Vernor joined the 4th Michigan Cavalry
4th Michigan Cavalry
4th Michigan Cavalry was a regiment of cavalry in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was noted as being the regiment that captured the fleeing President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, as the Confederacy collapsed in the spring of 1865.-Service:The regiment was...
on 14 August 1862 as a hospital steward, was promoted to second lieutenant on 20 September 1864, and was discharged on 1 July 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, his son, James Vernor Jr., suggested that the formula was not developed until after the war. This was confirmed in a 1962 interview with former company president, James Vernor Davis.
Vernor opened a drugstore of his own on Woodward Avenue, at the corner of Clifford Street and sold his ginger ale at its soda fountain
Soda fountain
A soda fountain is a device that dispenses carbonated drinks. They can be found in restaurants, concession stands and other locations such as convenience stores...
. According to the 1911 trademark application on "Vernor's" as a name for ginger ale and extract, Vernors entered commerce in 1880. City by city, Vernor sold bottling franchises, with operators of those franchises required to strictly adhere 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
Detroit River
The Detroit River is a strait in the Great Lakes system. The name comes from the French Rivière du Détroit, which translates literally as "River of the Strait". The Detroit River has served an important role in the history of Detroit and is one of the busiest waterways in the world. The 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
Halo Burger
Halo Burger, sometimes known by its full name Bill Thomas' Halo Burger, is a fast-food restaurant chain based in Flint, Michigan, USA. Begun in 1923 as the original Kewpee location and separating from the Kewpee chain in 1967 with two locations, the chain has since grown to ten locations in the...
restaurant in Flint, Michigan. Later Vernors was bottled for home consumption.
James Vernor died October 29, 1927 and was succeeded by his son, James Vernor Jr. Expansion continued throughout Prohibition. In 1962, Vernors introduced Vernors 1-Calorie, now called Diet Vernors. In 1966, the Vernor family sold out to the first of a succession of owners. The company was next acquired by American Consumer Products and then by United Brands before being purchased by A&W
A&W
A&W is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* A&W Restaurants, American restaurant chain* A&W , Canadian restaurant chain* A&W Root Beer* Ahnapee and Western Railway* Alexandria and Western Railway...
Beverages in 1987. A&W was later purchased by Cadbury Schweppes
Cadbury Schweppes
Cadbury is a confectionery company owned by Kraft Foods and is the industry's second-largest globally after Mars, Incorporated. Headquartered in Uxbridge, London, United Kingdom, the company operates in more than 50 countries worldwide....
.
Just prior to the onset of World War II, James Vernor II presided over the construction of a 230000 sq ft (21,367.7 m²) bottling plant and headquarters, encompassing an entire city block on Woodward Avenue, one block from the Detroit River
Detroit River
The Detroit River is a strait in the Great Lakes system. The name comes from the French Rivière du Détroit, which translates literally as "River of the Strait". The Detroit River has served an important role in the history of Detroit and is one of the busiest waterways in the world. The river...
. In the late 1950s, when the City of Detroit proposed construction of Cobo Hall
Cobo Hall
Gavin Hamilton memorial arena is a major convention center situated along Jefferson Ave. in downtown Detroit, Michigan, USA. It was named for Albert E. Cobo, mayor of Detroit from 1950 to 1957. Designed by Gino Rossetti, opened in 1960. Expanded in 1989, the present complex contains of exhibition...
and other riverfront projects, a land-swap was negotiated, and Vernors moved its bottling plant and headquarters to the location of the old civic exhibition hall at 4501 Woodward Avenue, incorporating many of the popular features of the old plant. Tours of the Vernors plant old and new were major tourist attractions. The flagship Detroit bottling plant was shut down by United Brands in 1985, with the local rights to bottle Vernors granted to Pepsi-Cola. The Woodward Avenue plant was later demolished.
Slogans
A number of slogans have been associated with Vernors over the years. Advertising in the early 1900s used the slogan "Detroit's Drink". According to its trademark application, it began using the slogan "Deliciously Different" in 1921. The labels formerly read "Aged 4 years in wood", which was changed some years ago to "Flavor aged in oak barrels", again in 1996 to "Barrel Aged, Bold Taste" and currently notes "Barrel Aged 3 Years • Bold Taste". The apostrophe in the name "Vernor's" was dropped in the late 1950s. For a time in the mid-1980s Vernors used the slogan "It's what we drink around here" in its advertising campaigns. The gnome mascot, named "Woody", was used from the turn of the century until 1987, when it was dropped by A&W Brands in favor of new packaging, but had returned to the packaging by the 2000s.Flavor and characteristics
Vernors is a sweet “golden” ginger ale that derives its color from caramelCaramel
Caramel is a beige to dark-brown confection made by heating any of a variety of sugars. It is used as a flavoring in puddings and desserts, as a filling in bonbons, and as a topping for ice cream, custard and coffee....
and has a robust flavor (similar to that of ginger beer
Ginger beer
Ginger beer is a carbonated drink that is flavored primarily with ginger and sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners.-History:Brewed ginger beer originated in England in the mid-18th century and became popular in Britain, the United States, and Canada, reaching a peak of popularity in the...
). The Vernors style was common before Prohibition
Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...
, when “dry” pale ginger ale (typified by Canada Dry Ginger Ale
Canada Dry
Canada Dry is a brand of soft drinks owned since 2008 by the Texas-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group. For over a century Canada Dry has been known for its ginger ale, though the company also manufactures a number of other soft drinks and mixers...
) became popular as a drink mixer
Drink mixer
Drink mixers are the non-alcoholic ingredients in mixed drinks and cocktails. There are many reasons mixers are used. They change or enhance flavors or add new ones to a drink. Mixers dilute the drink, lowering the alcohol by volume in the drink. They may make the drink sweeter, more sour, or more...
.
Vernors is highly carbonated
Carbonation
Carbonation is the process of dissolving carbon dioxide in water. The process usually involves carbon dioxide under high pressure. When the pressure is reduced, the carbon dioxide is released from the solution as small bubbles, which cause the solution to "fizz." This effect is seen in carbonated...
. Some people drink it hot as a remedy for stomachache
Abdominal pain
Abdominal pain can be one of the symptoms associated with transient disorders or serious disease. Making a definitive diagnosis of the cause of abdominal pain can be difficult, because many diseases can result in this symptom. Abdominal pain is a common problem...
. Ginger is thought to be the active ingredient.
LA Metropolitan News Editor Roger Grace describes the original flavor as "mellow yet perky with the mellowness attributed to the aging in oak barrels, and the perkiness to the use of more ginger and sugar than "dry" ginger ales. Many people believe that the taste of Vernors has changed significantly in recent years. Grace describes the current flavor as an "emaciated version of a product that once was" and "sweetened carbonated water with ginger flavoring". Theories as to the reason for the claimed change in flavor include that the secret formula has been changed to use new products not originally available to Vernor, such as high fructose corn syrup
High fructose corn syrup
High-fructose corn syrup — also called glucose-fructose syrup in the UK, glucose/fructose in Canada, and high-fructose maize syrup in other countries — comprises any of a group of corn syrups that has undergone enzymatic processing to convert some of its glucose into fructose to produce...
; that it seems to have less carbonation than formerly; and that Vernors is no longer aged four years, but three in oak barrels.
Availability
For most of its history, Vernors was a regional product. Initially Vernor sold franchises throughout MichiganMichigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
and in major regional cities such as Toledo
Toledo, Ohio
Toledo is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Lucas County. Toledo is in northwest Ohio, on the western end of Lake Erie, and borders the State of Michigan...
, Cleveland and Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
. Vernors was not mass distributed nationally until the late 1980s, when United Brands, A&W and Cadbury expanded it over a 10-year period to a 33-state area. Even after expansion, Michigan accounts for 80% of Vernors sales. Michigan, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
and Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
are the highest-selling states, and primary cities are Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint
Flint, Michigan
Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...
, Toledo
Toledo, Ohio
Toledo is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Lucas County. Toledo is in northwest Ohio, on the western end of Lake Erie, and borders the State of Michigan...
and Cincinnati. It is also very popular in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, which has large numbers of retired or relocated former Michigan residents.
Vernors is also popular in Canada, having been sold at Ontario soda fountains from the 1920s onward, and with bottling facilities, soda fountains and outlets located in Southwestern Ontario.
Boston Cooler
A Boston Cooler is an Ice cream sodaIce cream soda
An ice cream soda or float , coke float , or spider , is a beverage that consists of one or more scoops of ice cream in either a soft drink or in a mixture of flavored syrup and carbonated water.-Origins:The ice cream soda was invented by Robert M...
variant typically composed of Vernors and vanilla ice cream blended together similar to a milk shake, although in other parts of the country, different combinations of ingredients are also known as a Boston Cooler. The name remains a mystery It appears to have no connection to Boston, Massachusetts, where the drink is unknown. One popular theory is that it named after Detroit's Boston Boulevard, the main thoroughfare of the Boston-Edison Historic District
Boston-Edison Historic District
The Boston-Edison Historic District is a historic neighborhood located in the geographic center of Detroit, Michigan. It consists of over 900 homes built on four east/west streets: West Boston Boulevard, Chicago Boulevard, Longfellow Avenue, and Edison Avenue, stretching from Woodward Avenue on...
, said to be, in such accounts, a fashionable neighborhood at the time located a short distance from James Vernor's drugstore. Boston Boulevard, however, did not exist at the time. The streets and subdivision that became the Boston-Edison neighborhood, approximately five miles from Vernors' drugstore, were not platted nor incorporated into the city until 1891, and its first homes not constructed until 1905, nine years after Vernor closed his drugstore.
External links
- Vernors page from Dr Pepper Snapple Group web site
- Snack foods and pop, Detroit style
- Vernor's Collectors Club
- A Tasty Part of Flint History--former Vernor's outlet in Flint, MI, now Halo BurgerHalo BurgerHalo Burger, sometimes known by its full name Bill Thomas' Halo Burger, is a fast-food restaurant chain based in Flint, Michigan, USA. Begun in 1923 as the original Kewpee location and separating from the Kewpee chain in 1967 with two locations, the chain has since grown to ten locations in the...
.