We'll Never Know What's Really In This Old-Fashioned Kentucky Soda

Whenever we drive through Kentucky, my husband makes it a point to stop at a convenience store to pick up a pack of Ale-8 soda. He was a young boy the first time his uncle gave him a bottle, and he immediately loved it. But it was elusive, something he could only get when he visited family in Kentucky and so, to this day, he feels it's a special treat to get his hands on a bottle. When I asked him what it tastes like, he responded that Ale-8, "Just hits different. It's got more character than your average ginger ale, but it's not spicy like a ginger beer." It turns out, he's on the right track with the ginger angle, but most people in the world will never know the exact ingredients in Ale-8.

Since its inception, the recipe for Ale-8 has been a confidential, family secret, with less than a handful of people ever having access to the original recipe. Founder George Lee Wainscott started making sodas in 1902. Having become fascinated with a carbonation machine, he first created a cola called Roxa-Kola, but was sued by a larger cola company. In the midst of the lawsuit, he began researching recipes for a new soda. Wainscott traveled to Northern Europe, where he was inspired by ginger beer. For his own soda pop, he toned down the spice of classic ginger beer and added citrus flavors. Wainscott's original, handwritten recipe notes are still hung on a wall in the private, locked batching room at the Ale-8 plant in Kentucky, where the current leader and Wainscott's great-great nephew, Fielding Rogers, personally mixes the soda batches. If history continues to repeat itself, it will be only those in Wainscott's lineage who discover exactly what makes up the flavor of Ale-8.

By the time George Lee Wainscott was satisfied that he'd made the perfect, clean, and refreshing ginger-citrus soda, he decided to introduce it at the 1926 Clark County Fair. He didn't have a name for the beverage yet, so he established a contest and invited fairgoers to submit names for it. One contestant entered the name "A Late One," which was another way of saying "the latest thing" at the time. Wainscott loved it and turned the phrase into the name "Ale-8-One," which is now almost always shortened to "Ale-8" by those referring to the soda.

While the original Ale-8's recipe amazingly hasn't changed in roughly a century, the company has added to its soda lineup by introducing caffeine-free and diet versions of Ale-8, in addition to cherry, blackberry, and orange cream flavors, although it's unclear if the company is as secretive with these flavors as it is with the original. It can be difficult to find packs and bottles of Ale-8 outside of Kentucky, because it's very much a regional soda that we wish were available everywhere. But you can order the sodas on the company's website, and Ale-8 also distributes its products to Cracker Barrel locations (which recently ditched its new logo) nationwide.