In the last two weeks, I have drunk more carbonated soft drinks than I have in the last five, probably even 10, years. However it's likely you won't have heard of a single brand — I certainly hadn't. Virgil's, Dad's, AJ Stephans, Boylan's, Hank's, Sprecher... anything familiar yet?

"Vintage sodas", especially root beers and cream sodas are my new obsession. (Please note, all the ‘beers' mentioned in this article are soft drinks.) I first tried root beer some years ago at a fast-food chain and hated it. I couldn't imagine how someone could like this medicinal, cough-syrupy drink, and had to stop after just a couple of sips.

But recently, when I saw an Amish birch beer on sale at a restaurant, something dubbed a predecessor to modern root beer, I decided to give it a try. It had a mellow, spicy taste, and though it was similar to the fast-food root beer, it was different enough that I saw the light. A few more vintage sodas later, and I was hooked. One of my favourites, Virgil's root beer (in a limited ‘Bavarian nutmeg' edition) contains star anise, liquorice, vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, wintergreen and cassia oil, pimento berry oil, balsam oil and sweet birch and molasses. I'm sure you can already taste it, a spicy, complex, slightly dark flavour, with a great caramel sweetness.

Before coming to terms with root beer, I'd already been hooked on that American drugstore favourite, the cream soda. Flavoured largely with vanilla and featuring no dairy, cream sodas live up to their name with a rounded, smooth mouthfeel, even though they are pretty much all water. These sodas are always in glass bottles and usually sweetened with cane sugar or molasses rather than high-fructose corn syrup. Some are extant old brands dating as far back as the late 1800s, a few are old recipes that have been resurrected by new companies, and some are small-batch "artisanal" drinks from tiny companies, even one-man shows.

In the Highland Park area of Los Angeles, there's a supermarket dedicated to finds like these. Galco's Soda Pop Stop sells 50 brands of root beer alone, and another 50 brands of cream soda. Other soft drink flavours include rhubarb, coconut, dandelion and burdock, bubble gum, a chai cola, a "botanically brewed Curiosity Cola", and an espresso coffee soda.

Irresistible drinks

I recently visited Galco's and bought a case-load of assorted drinks, choosing largely from root beers and cream sodas, and avoiding anything that contained high-fructose corn syrup. Some, like the Sprecher Cream Soda that's flavoured with honey, were so delicious I could barely resist gulping them down. Many were just okay, with a sugary flavour and high-acid fizz that I didn't like. There were only two drinks so bad I couldn't finish them. To my surprise, one was the espresso soda, which tasted like flat decoction. The other was a spruce beer that had a strong, resinous flavour I didn't find food-like. It smelled pleasantly of the woods, of pine needles and rosemary (and spruce, I suppose), but it tasted too much like camphor.

I have a feeling vintage sodas are going to be the next big thing in drinks, following smoothies, microbrews and superberry juices. If like me, you've barely touched soft drinks in years, try one of these unknown brands and be surprised by their complex flavours and balanced sweetness. Because they taste so good, you understand they are treats, not just replacements for water, and with each sip you wonder why they even bother to lock that other famous drink's recipe in a vault.

 

Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the US.