Vernors fans tickled to celebrate 160 years of iconic pop at Detroit event

Detroit ― Metro Detroiters lifted up small paper cups of Vernors in Eastern Market on Sunday and celebrated the 160th anniversary of the iconic Michigan beverage.

Dozens of people crowded a block on Riopelle Street in Detroit to participate in the toast. After a countdown, they cheered and drank the fizzy drink.

The toast was part of the Vernors 160th Anniversary Celebration, which was organized by the Vernor’s Ginger Ale Collector’s Club and held in Eastern Market. Hundreds attended the event, where Vernor’s lovers had the chance to savor Vernors ice cream and floats and sample a cream ale drink. Other activities included buying 160th anniversary T-shirts and getting Vernors temporary tattoos.

Some donned green Vernors shirts or wore gnome-shaped hats made out of paper.

Bridgette Exell of Plymouth said she and her husband came to the event because they love Vernors and they wanted to see the different foods being offered at the celebration.

“I’ve tried a lot of different ginger ales over the years,” she said, “and I think the kind of spicy bite of Vernors is top notch.”

She was waiting in a long line to get Vernors ice cream, which she had never tried before.

Celebrating Vernors history

James Vernor created Vernors and it was first served to the public in 1866, according to the Detroit Historical Society.

Keith Wunderlich of Troy and founder of the Vernor’s Ginger Ale Collector’s Club said many people came to the event in “a pouring rainstorm” to celebrate Vernors, which he thinks is “just absolutely fantastic.”

“It … says a lot,” he said.

Wunderlich said his parents dated at the Vernors soda fountain in Detroit in the 1940s. He said many people of his generation remember seeing the large neon sign on Woodward Avenue at the Vernors plant.

“It’s always part of our life,” he said of Vernors.

The “‘deliciously different’ ginger ale” saw its last bottle “filled and capped at the Woodward Avenue plant on Jan. 18, 1985,” historicdetroit.org said, thereby leaving the city despite plans to reopen elsewhere.

The drink is now owned by Keurig Dr Pepper. The company donated the Vernors that Wunderlich and others served at the celebration.

Several Eastern Market businesses participated in the event. Wunderlich said Detroit City Distillery offered adult beverages made with Vernors, and Marrow in the Market had a Vernors brunch.

Vernors fans celebrate the drink

Wunderlich and other event organizers made samples of cream ale. The drink had been served at Vernors soda fountains, he said. The drink on Sunday consisted of two parts Vernors to one part sweet cream.

Ecorse resident Michele Carmona and her daughter, Lettecia Carmona, sampled the drink.

“It was good,” Lettecia Carmona said.

Michele Carmona, who was wearing a Vernors green shirt with a gnome on it, said she likes Vernors, especially when it’s part of a Boston cooler.

When you drink Vernors, you get a “sensational bubble feeling,” she said.

Milk & Froth Ice Cream created a Vernors ice cream for the event, and it served ice cream and floats from a food truck. Vernors ice cream hasn’t been served since the 1980s, Wunderlich said.

“It was something that some of us that are a little older are familiar with,” said Andy Scheel of Shelby Township.

He said it tastes “pretty similar” to the ice cream of the past.

asnabes@detroitnews.com