Ale‑8 celebrates century of pop culture

Generations of Winchester res­i­dents know the sto­ry of how Ale-8-One was intro­duced at the 1926 Clark County Fair. A con­test to decide what to call the new gin­ger-fla­vored soft drink result­ed in “A Late One,” which was then a way of say­ing, “the lat­est thing.”

A cen­tu­ry lat­er, Ale‑8 is more a sto­ried tra­di­tion than a new sen­sa­tion, but those who are loy­al to the brand haven’t lost their enthu­si­asm for its refresh­ing fla­vor or their devo­tion to its cult-like status.

If you’re in Winchester long enough, you’ll see a paint­ing of the famil­iar green glass bot­tle in a tobac­co field or anoth­er of a bot­tle hold­ing a long-stem rose. Or maybe a vin­tage met­al sign adver­tis­ing: Drink Ale 8 1. It Glorifies. 5¢ on the side of a coun­try store. Or some­one wear­ing a T‑shirt like the one Orlando Bloom made famous in the 2005 rom-com Elizabethtown.

“There’s some­thing quirky, some­thing dif­fer­ent about it, that peo­ple seem to grav­i­tate toward,” Sean Wachsman, Ale 8’s vice pres­i­dent for mar­ket­ing, said in an inter­view this week.

“There’s lots of lore, and peo­ple sort of devel­op their own con­nec­tions to it that they car­ry for­ward,” he said.

Wachsman recalled a con­ver­sa­tion he had a cou­ple of weeks ago with a man he met in Lexington whose grand­fa­ther had worked for Ale‑8 cap­ping bot­tles with the company’s founder. Those are the kinds of sto­ries that res­onate with people.

“So many brands dream of hav­ing what Ale‑8 has, and that’s some­thing we don’t take for grant­ed,” he added.

A family’s legacy

Ale-8-One is the old­est pri­vate­ly held bot­tling com­pa­ny in the United States still owned and oper­at­ed by its found­ing fam­i­ly. That’s part of its appeal, said Wachsman.

While most small soda com­pa­nies have gone under or been swal­lowed up by big brands, Ale 8 thrives by being inno­v­a­tive, yet stays true to its fam­i­ly lega­cy. A big part of that, Wachsman said, is tak­ing care of the workers.

“The fam­i­ly doesn’t wor­ship at the altar of max­i­miz­ing share­hold­er val­ue,” Wachsman said. “That goes back to putting employ­ees at the cen­ter of what we do and every deci­sion we make. There’s a lot of pride in that. We believe that if we take care of our employ­ees  . . . the rest will come.”

Five years ago, Fielding Rogers, the company’s pres­i­dent, told the mag­a­zine Business Lexington, “We’ll always be a fam­i­ly business.”

Rogers, the fourth gen­er­a­tion of the fam­i­ly to run the com­pa­ny, took the helm from his father when he was only 28 years old.

Recipe for success

Ale-8-One was the inven­tion of George Lee Wainscott of Winchester, who became fas­ci­nat­ed with bev­er­ages after see­ing a car­bon­a­tion machine in oper­a­tion at the city’s old rail­road depot.

In 1906, Wainscott began pro­duc­ing Roxa Kola at a plant across Main Street from the train sta­tion, and short­ly after he launched it, Coca Cola sued, sug­gest­ing that the name was too sim­i­lar to its own. Wainscott won, includ­ing an appeal in fed­er­al court, and he con­tin­ued to pro­duce his cola until 1968, when it was dis­con­tin­ued. It was revived two years ago.

A cou­ple of decades after Roxa Kola debuted, Wainscott trav­eled to north­ern Europe, where gin­ger beers were then pop­u­lar, and sam­pled some of them. He exper­i­ment­ed with his own recipe, adding cit­rus fla­vors to reduce the heat until he came up with one that wasn’t too sweet or too spicy. It was nei­ther a gin­ger beer nor a gin­ger ale, but some­thing else.

“It speaks to the heart of what G.L. Wainscott was try­ing to do, which was to cre­ate some­thing that was so unique that it was its own thing,” Wachsman remarked.

After it was intro­duced at the coun­ty fair, the gin­ger-fla­vored drink became pop­u­lar, and in 1935, Wainscott pur­chased an old liv­ery sta­ble on West Broadway and con­vert­ed it into a bot­tling plant. Thirty years lat­er, the Ale-8-One Bottling Company moved to its cur­rent loca­tion on Carol Road, where it now pro­duces up to 240,000 bot­tles daily.

“Every bot­tle of Ale‑8 has always come out of Winchester, and the only facil­i­ty we own is where we are now,” Wachsman said.

Ale‑8 now has sev­er­al diet and fruit-fla­vored vari­eties as well as the orig­i­nal, and its prod­ucts are dis­trib­uted not only through­out Central and Eastern Kentucky, as they have been for gen­er­a­tions, but also in states bor­der­ing Kentucky.

Through arrange­ments with Cracker Barrel and Fresh Market, Ale‑8 is avail­able on a lim­it­ed basis around the coun­try. It is still close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Kentucky, how­ev­er, and is the state’s offi­cial soft drink.

“Kentucky is a part of Ale‑8’s DNA as much as Ale‑8 is a part of Kentucky’s DNA,” Wachsman said.

Here at home, many restau­rants and bars offer Ale‑8 as a foun­tain drink.

Fielding Rogers, Wainscott’s great-great-nephew, still mix­es the soda’s secret recipe based on his ancestor’s hand­writ­ten instruc­tions in a pri­vate room at the top of a spi­ral staircase.

“The only peo­ple that know the recipe are fam­i­ly mem­bers. The CEO doesn’t know it,” Wachsman said.

Many com­pa­nies talk about their secret recipes, he said, but “this one is real.”

Contrary to what many believe, Ale‑8 is not high­ly caf­feinat­ed. In fact, it has less caf­feine than Coke or Mountain Dew.

“It’s a lit­tle less than a cup of cof­fee,” Wachsman said.

There is also a caf­feine-free, zero-sug­ar ver­sion of the beverage.

Flavor vari­eties include cher­ry, orange cream, and black­ber­ry, and oth­er fla­vors are offered on a sea­son­al basis, such as peach and strawberry-watermelon.

Centennial celebration

This Saturday, Aug. 1, Ale-8-One will cel­e­brate its 100^th anniver­sary with a block par­ty on Winchester’s Main Street from 5 to 9 p.m.

It will begin with the unveil­ing of a his­tor­i­cal mark­er in front of the Winchester Post Office, where the orig­i­nal Ale‑8 fac­to­ry stood, and will con­tin­ue near the Clark County Courthouse fea­tur­ing live music with Bedford and Cole Chaney, food trucks, ice cream floats, and a store­front muse­um and pop-up shop where guests may buy 100^th anniver­sary T‑shirts and oth­er apparel.

There will be an inter­ac­tive mur­al cre­at­ed that will be hung inside the plant when it’s completed.

Of course, there will be plen­ty of Ale‑8, includ­ing the new paw paw-fla­vored vari­ety, which was brought back from last sum­mer for the occasion.

Regeneration Distillery on Broadway will be offer­ing adult bev­er­ages that include Ale‑8 as part of the mix, and West Sixth Brewing will pro­vide beer.

The actu­al 100^th anniver­sary was on July 13, and two days lat­er, the com­pa­ny held a pri­vate cel­e­bra­tion for its employ­ees and their fam­i­lies and guests.

It was for­tu­itous that the pub­lic cel­e­bra­tion, on “Eight-One” hap­pens to fall on a Saturday.

“Everyone is excit­ed, between the peo­ple who work at the com­pa­ny and the city of Winchester,” Wachsman said.

Putting people first

The vice pres­i­dent said the company’s empha­sis on its peo­ple, includ­ing mak­ing sure they have good wages and ben­e­fits, and that “we get to know each oth­er on a more per­son­al lev­el . . . is real­ly important.”

That mind­set, he said, has sus­tained the com­pa­ny for so long.

“That trans­lates to the con­sumers, the fans. Ultimately, if we didn’t have the fans that we have, we wouldn’t be here. It all goes back to the peo­ple,” he said.

That busi­ness mod­el has worked for 100 years, and, Wachsman said, “we are going to be around for anoth­er hun­dred years.”