Fentimans Brewed Soda:
Pop Crew Circa 1905

CAPSULE REPORT: Beverages are the fastest-growing category in specialty foods; in the carbonated category, to take just one segment, sales increased almost 12% in 2007 over the prior year and the store shelves are piled high. There are some great 21st century sodas, spanning the range from sparkling juice like Fizzy Lizzy, green tea like Steaz, “adult” sodas with reduced sugar like GuS and Dry Soda, and flavored club soda energy drinks like Hiball.

One hundred years ago, your options for a soda were much more limited. You’d go to the soda fountain at the local pharmacy for a cola, ginger ale, root beer or other flavor. The counter man would pump syrup into a glass, then jerk back the tap of carbonated water (hence, the title “soda jerk”) to create your soda. Bottled beverages for take-out didn’t appear until Prohibition.

But across the pond in England, Fentimans Botanically Brewed Beverages were delivered door-to-door in stone jars. These, too, evolved into individual, capped bottles; today the line, in its Victorian trappings, is available in the U.S. as well. Curiosity Cola, Dandelion & Burdock, Ginger Beer, Mandarin & Seville Orange Jigger, Shandy (real shandy, brewed with beer) and Victorian Lemonade (each bottle containing the juice of 1-1/2 lemons) add charm and great natural taste to the 21st century menu. It’s an enchanting return to yesteryear, without the need to crank up the Model T and putter down to Whitman’s Drug Store. Learn more about Shandy, Jigger and the rest of the Victorian pop crew in the full review below, and why it takes seven days to brew this soda. And take a look at more of our favorite all-natural sodas in our Soft Drinks Section.

• Read reviews of more of our favorite soft
  drinks.
• See the Table of Contents of the
  September issue of THE NIBBLE, plus the
  prior issues archive and our most popular
  articles.
• All of the Top Pick Of The Week
  newsletters are permanently archived on
  TheNibble.com, in chronological order and
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• See our daily notes of interest on
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INDEX OF REVIEW

• Page 1: Introduction
• Page 2: Fentimans Soda Flavors:
  Curiosity Cola
• Page 3: Dandelion & Burdock And
  Ginger Beer
• Page 4: Orange Jigger And Shandy
• Page 5: Victorian Lemonade
• Page 5: Buy Fentimans Online
• Page 5: Other “Top Pick Of The
  Week” Cold Beverages

MORE TO DISCOVER

• THE NIBBLE’s Soft Drinks Section
• Product Pick #2: Southern Alps Dried Fruit
  Preservative-free fruit, slow dried by Mother
  Nature.
• Recipe: Chocolate Cappuccino Noodle
  Kugel
  A favorite for those who celebrate Rosh
  Hashanah—and those who don’t.

Introduction

Some second careers are planned, others are serendipitous. In 1905, Thomas Fentiman, an ironworker from the small mill town of Cleckheaton, in the center of West Yorkshire, a county in north central England. He loaned money to a tradesman, who put up as collateral a recipe for botanically brewed ginger beer. We must assume that it was an exceptional recipe and represented great value to Fentiman—perhaps the same covetousness that people have for our mother’s brownie recipe.

As fate would have it, the borrower defaulted on the loan and Fentiman left the hot business of molten iron to become a quencher of thirsts with ginger beer and, subsequently, other refreshments. Fentiman’s descendants were fortunate. The mill business ultimately dried up in England, but soft drinks stayed put. Today, his grandson continues to produce the Ginger Beer as well as Curiosity Cola, Dandelion & Burdock, Mandarin & Seville Orange Jigger, Shandy and Victorian Lemonade. All are botanically brewed and fermented, in the manner of the original recipe.