Frank Witsil

Detroit Free Press

Christine Kole keeps a 2-liter bottle of Vernors in the pantry to settle her stomach whenever it aches.

"It's got a little spicy kick to it," said the 63-year-old Ferndale resident, who grew up drinking the ginger ale first made in Detroit. "You taste the ginger in it, and it always makes me sneeze when I first drink it. It bubbles. That immediately hits my nose."

Vernors — which was originally Vernor's, before the apostrophe was dropped decades ago — is among the oldest continuously made soft drinks in America. This week, it celebrates its 150th anniversary.

For many Vernors drinkers, it's a nostalgic celebration. Generations of Michiganders, like Kole, grew up with the effervescent, caramel-colored elixir as a beverage of choice, a special treat on special occasions and also as a general cure for whatever ailed them.

A few years ago on network television, singer Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, was making a recipe that required Vernors and called the ginger ale a "Detroit treasure."

Vernors is no longer made in Detroit, and the business has changed hands many times. But the drink has endured.

"Vernors is so unique," said Joel Stone, 60, the senior curator of the Detroit Historical Society. The historical museum even has a small collection of Vernors artifacts. "Putting it in romantic terms, Vernors ties back to good things people remember about their childhood. Times were simpler then. If you were a good boy on a hot summer Saturday and you got the grass cut, you got to have a cold Vernors."

To commemorate the anniversary, restaurants also plan to serve specials made with Vernors. Among the public events and celebrations planned: the Detroit Historical Museum is setting up a special exhibit that opens Tuesday, and will be on display until next Sunday. On Saturday, the museum is holding an anniversary party.

Aretha Franklin shares Christmas ham recipe with Vernors glaze on LIVE with Kelly and Michael

Business ingenuity

The story goes that in 1862 Detroit pharmacist James Vernor concocted a new drink.

It was a mix of medical tonic, vanilla and spices, with a touch of ginger to soothe a sour stomach. He was going off to fight the Civil War, so he stored it in an oak cask. Four years later, he returned from battle, tapped the keg and Vernors was born.

By some accounts, he tasted his drink and declared it to be "Deliciously different!" which became the drink's motto.

Stone said it's a fantastic story, but it's also probably an apocryphal one.

What was true, according to Stone, was that Vernor studied pharmacy and was issued the first pharmacy licence in the state. He tinkered with flavors to duplicate a ginger ale that was imported from Europe, and after he was discharged from the 4th Michigan Cavalry, he began selling it from a Woodward Avenue drugstore soda fountain.

As demand grew, Vernor sold syrup to soda fountains. Later, he got out of the drugstore business to focus on making just the pop. He brought in his namesake son to run the business and went to great lengths to keep the recipe a carefully-guarded secret.

"In the world of ginger ale," Stone said, "Vernors stands completely apart because of its bold flavor."

Marketing savvy

Throughout Prohibition, the company expanded.

A bottling plant and headquarters was built in Detroit. A soda fountain near the ferry boat docks on the Detroit River welcomed passengers with ice cold drinks. A big Vernors sign added to the city skyline, and the company distributed pop throughout Michigan and the Midwest.

"Vernor's made ginger ale and that's all they made," Stone said. "It was unique in the country, and Detroit had it. Detroiters latched on to that. They moved other places. But when they would come back to visit, they'd take it home with them long before it had national distribution."

The drink also became an ingredient in all sorts of family recipes. It is baked into cakes, baked beans, added to glazes and even combined with scoops of vanilla ice cream to make a refreshing summer treat known throughout Michigan as a Boston Cooler. Combined with chocolate milk and it becomes a brown cow in some circles.

But when the company turned 100, the next generations of the Vernor family decided to sell it to a group of investors.

Since then, it has been owned by a variety of groups.

In 1971, Vernors was sold to American Consumer products, then to United Brands, which closed the Detroit bottling plant in the 1980s, and then it was sold to A&W Brands. In 1993, A&W was acquired by Cadbury Schweppes; and in 2008, Cadbury’s North American beverages business was spun off as Dr. Pepper Snapple Group.

Detroit nostalgia

Chris Barnes, a spokesman for Dr. Pepper Snapple, said Vernors makes up about 1% of the company's total sales volume; it's one of about 50 drink brands the company owns.

The drink is still bottled in Michigan, in Holland, and other cities nationwide.

But while Vernors is distributed in several states, by far, its most loyal — and passionate — customers are in Michigan.

Last year, the company said, it sold more than 7 million cases of Vernors, a large percentage — although not a majority — of the sales were in Michigan.

As much as any other product that was invented and made in Michigan, Vernors — which has a unique look, taste and smell — evokes a powerful response.

"Growing up, we always had Vernors in the house, and a couple of times, when I was younger, I went down to the Vernors factory on Woodward Avenue with my grandparents," said ​Mike Wisniewski, 50, of Detroit. "I prefer to drink Vernors over everything else — warm, cold, with ice cream — it doesn't matter,"

For folks like Kole, Vernors brings back precious memories.

Kole associates the drink with her mother, now 91, who told her stories of how as a willowy, young woman in the 1940s, she'd walk from the Guardian Building, where she worked, to the old Vernors plant to have a Boston Cooler, and then stroll the riverfront and dance the jitterbug.

Kole remembers getting the pop from her mom as a treat when she was a girl.

And she recalls how it was the one concoction she could count on to soothe the awful pains she had when she was pregnant with each of her three children.

"Nobody else makes ginger ale the way they did in Detroit," Kole said. "It's very comforting."

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.