Centenni-ale celebration
At the top of a spiral staircase and behind a locked door lies a room where the magic of a family recipe and Kentucky tradition comes to life.
Every bottle of Ale-8-One, the state’s official original soft drink, is produced in Winchester, the same city where it was born just over a century ago, on July 13, 1926.
Fielding Rogers is the company’s owner and chairman of the board. He still mixes the secret Ale-8-One formula from a note that was handwritten by his great-great-uncle, company founder and recipe inventor George Lee Wainscott. The mixing process takes about six hours and produces 3 million bottles of product.
“It’s so rare that a company makes it, much less makes it decades, or 100 years, or four generations,” Rogers says. “We’re one of the last independent bottlers left.” What sets Ale-8 apart is the special relationship Kentuckians have with the brand. “You see people with an Ale-8 tattoo … you know they’re probably from Kentucky,” he says.
Rogers learned how to mix the recipe from his dad and has been involved in the process for more than 20 years. He never met Wainscott, who died in 1944, but the family’s secret recipe bridges the generations. The company now produces about 240,000 bottles of Ale-8-One per day, all based on a formula that has never changed.
In celebration of the centennial, Ale-8-One has released special cartons, labels and trays, as well as anniversary displays in stores. On Aug. 1, also known as “Ale-8-One Day,” the company celebrated the “centenni-ale” in downtown Winchester, near the location of the original factory, with food trucks, activities and a historical society marker unveiling.
“It’s kind of a unicorn of a brand and a company,” Rogers says. “I think that’s partly because Kentucky is just kind of a special place.”
