Rat Rod
Owner & Founder
Took the family on a little trip to Dublin, Texas today.
What's so special about Dublin you ask?
Well, it's the home to one of the oldest Dr. Pepper bottling facilities in existence. They were the first to start bottling Dr. Pepper back in 1891 and did so up until last year when corporate D.P. took them to court and basically sued them so that they could no longer bottle and distribute Dublin Dr. Pepper. By agreement (in 1891), they could only sell Dublin D.P. within a 44 square mile radius of Dublin and over the years folks kept taking more and more of it further out and selling it until finally corporate D.P. decided to put an end to the magic. As you can imagine, and you may have heard, it created quite an uproar here in Texas and it was in the news for a few weeks.
http://www.kens5.com/news/Tearful-farew ... 70773.html
Anyway, we'd been meaning to get down there and take the tour for several years, so today we decided to make the journey down. I guess you could say it was on my Texas bucket list. :lol:
Dublin is about an hour and a half west of Fort Worth...which might as well be New Mexico. The town would probably not exist if it weren't for the bottling plant. In the past they had a big celebration each year called Dr. Pepper Days and unfortunately they aren't able to do that anymore...thanks corp. D.P. :roll:
They take you on a little 20 minute tour of the bottling facilities which are only used once a week now to produce only about 1000 bottles of soda. They make several different flavors including Big Red, XXX Root Beer, Frostie Root Beer, etc. They only use the refillable 10oz bottles and the only way you can buy those is by trading in similar vintage refillable bottles. They have a whole new line of flavors that they bottle and sell, but they are produced at another facility.
The thing that makes them distinctly different is that they only use Imperial Pure Cane sugar to sweeten all of their drinks....no corn syrup ever. This is what made their D.P. different all of those years.
You also ge to go through their museum with all of their memorabilia, but they wouldn't let you take photos. They had a TON of really cool vintage D.P. promo materials and packaging. It was VERY hard to walk through and look at all of the neat stuff they had without taking photos. It's got to be one of the biggest collections in existence.
So here are some photos of the place...
Some 30 year old Dublin D.P. still sitting around...
Tour guide showing us the bottle washer...
Where the clean bottles come out...
The bottle filler...
Fills the bottle with syrup and carbonated water and caps the bottles too...
Bottles heading to the mixer...
Some Big Red ready for consumption...
Once the tour is over you can hang out in Doc's Soda Shop/Gift store and have lunch or enjoy a float, shake or several other ice cream desserts.
Another mural on the wall outside the shop...
A sand sculpture that was made to celebrate their new flavors...
Cool XXX Root Beer sign...
And finally, the good stuff...for a $1.00 a bottle.
