Dr Pepper

“About every three days, on the average, every man, woman and child in the state drinks a Dr Pepper,” Leo Janos wrote in the first-ever Texas Monthly. The days of advertisements claiming sugar and caffeine “brightens the mind and clears the brain” may be behind us, but the soft drink once known as a “Waco,” pre-dated Coca-Cola by five months and is as Texas as they come. The occasion of its invention on December 1, 1885 was #145 on our “Great Terquasquicentennial Road Trip,” while “Sip a Dublin Dr Pepper” was #10 on our Texas “Bucket List.” As Peter Elkind mused in July of 1985, being a “Pepper,” is a lot like being Texan: free-thinking, stalwart, and fizzy—with qualities no outsider will ever know or understand.
In Dr Pepper’s case, those qualities would be the absence of a period in “Dr Pepper” (here’s why) and its 23 flavors and spices, the secret formula for which is kept in a vault at Plano corporate headquarters (with back-ups in two bank vaults somewhere in the Metroplex). “No, I can’t tell you even one of the flavors,” Dr Pepper senior vice president of research and development told Brian D. Sweany in 2010. But prune juice isn’t one of them.
Equally good hot or cold, Dr Pepper also pops up as an ingredient in fudge, at fine Dallas restaurants and in BBQ sauce. Its greatest modern expression came via the town of Dublin, where the bottler known as Dublin Dr Pepper started offering the drink in 1891. A century later, Dublin was still sweetening its Dr Pepper with Imperial cane sugar, long after high-fructose corn syrup had become industry standard. “Over time, the word “Dublin” began to signify to aficionados of Dr Pepper what “prime” means to lovers of red meat,” Sweany wrote in his March, 2012 obituary for Dublin Dr Pepper.
That’s right: obituary. Once famously available in just six north central Texas counties, Dublin Dr Pepper had become more widely distributed in response to high demand, something the soft drink’s corporate parent, the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, had no problem with–until they did. “We call them bootleggers, but we mean that in the best way,” a company official said in 2006. But in January, 2012, the two companies terminated their relationship in a legal settlement. Dublin Dr Pepper is now Dublin Bottling Works, with its own line of naturally sweetened sodas, while Dr Pepper Snapple sells its own cane sugar version.
The death of Dublin Dr Pepper set off an explosion of love, grief and outrage on social media, with some people calling for a boycott. But Dublin’s Jeff Kloster, the grandson of original cane-sugar visionary W.P. Kloster, isn’t one of them. “I’d be lying if I said I’d never drink another Dr Pepper,” he said. “It’s part of our history. It’s still part of our life.”
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Dr Pepper Would Like to Be the Official Soft Drink of Texas—Not Just of Our Hearts
It seems like a formality at this point, but here’s why it makes sense to make our relationship with Dr Pepper official.
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Stubb’s Is Suing Stubb’s For Being Too Stubb’s-y
The debate over who can use Stubb’s branding fires up.
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Dublin Dr Pepper’s Last Obit
A twelve-ounce oral history of the long-awaited documentary, “Bottled Up: The Battle Over Dublin Dr Pepper.”
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Five Things You Might Not Know About Dublin Dr Pepper and Dublin Bottling Works
Like what the key ingredient is in their sodas, why it’s difficult to cook with most soft drinks, and how you can still drink Dublin Dr Pepper.
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126–150
From Buzz Bissinger arriving in Odessa—with a notepad—to Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen writing songs in College Station
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126–150
From Buzz Bissinger arriving in Odessa—with a notepad—to Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen writing songs in College Station
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Understanding Dr Pepper
IN SPITE OF THE NEW expansion, it may be that Dr. Pepper still looks better coming from a 7-11 cooler than it does from behind a New York bar. When served at a recent private screening of a new film …
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The “Dublin Dr Pepper” Legacy Lives On
After a disappointing settlement with Dr Pepper Snapple Group, the family that owns Dublin Bottling Works, Inc. continues to thrive using the same ingredient that fans have enjoyed for years—pure cane sugar.
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Dublin Dr Pepper Is Dead
The historic bottler’s settlement with Dr Pepper kills off a beloved Texas icon.
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Historic Downtown Jefferson
Eat and antique your way along the brick-paved streets of this charming East Texas town.
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Teenage Wasteland
With its optimistically broad streets and oversized cantilevered homes, Plano is the suburban ideal taken to its extreme, and its exaggerated scale often gives rise to exaggerated problems. Heroin addiction is only the latest.
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Pop Art
How 7 UP is trying to win back its share of the soft drink market, one commercial at a time.
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Wouldn’t You Like To Be a Pepper Too?
A Dublin bottler is the only one in Texas who’s still sweet on traditional Dr. Pepper.