Vernor's

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Image:Vernors.jpg 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. In 1862, 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 his pharmacy. 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 reportedly 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.

Vernors is a golden ginger ale with a pungent flavor. In the past it also had a reputation of being highly carbonated, so much so that drinking it from a glass would sometimes make one sneeze from the bubbles it would give off. Perhaps because of the carbonation, some people considered Vernor's a folk remedy for stomach ache.

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.

Vernors has not historically been distributed nationally. Until the late 1980s, the drink was only distributed within a few hundred miles of Detroit, but its distribution today has expanded slightly. It has particular popularity in Michigan, western New York, and extreme Southwestern Ontario, but can be found in a few other areas throughout the United States, such as West Virginia and Kentucky. It can also be found in Florida's Gulf Coast, and central Florida, both of which have large populations of retired Metro Detroiters.

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.

The Detroit Egg Cream is another drink made with Vernors. The ingredients include chocolate syrup and milk.

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