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Latest update: October 1, 2005: HTML Version 1.7
Original report: August-September 1997

About Ale 8-1:

A sidelight for Travelers in Central Kentucky

Ale 8-1 (pronounced "Ale Eight-One," a pun on "A Late One") is a soft drink that got its start in Winchester, Kentucky in 1926. It's more like ginger ale than anything else, but it's got a bit more of... well, it's not quite ginger ale. The idea was that you'd drink it to settle your stomach at bedtime, back when soft drinks all claimed to have medicinal properties.

The drink has been a local success for decades, and is gradually -- very gradually -- expanding; in addition to the original plant in Winchester they contracted with a packer in Elizabethtown in 1980, while we lived in Kentucky, to produce the cans and plastic bottles (but not glass). I've just recently learned that according to a story in the February 13, 2002 Lexington Herald-Leader, Ale 8 will be contracting with Coca-Cola Enterprises to make it available even more widely, though it'll apparently still just be in Kentucky and southern portions of Ohio and Indiana.

It's pretty good stuff, and curiously addictive; there are people in central Kentucky who guzzle it by the case. It's generally known just as ''Ale Eight,'' dropping the 1. We'd more or less forgotten about it until we got back there and saw the bottles and cans, but then it all came back. The kids wanted to try it, so we bought some.

Kiri loves it. She's annoyed that it can't easily be found anywhere near us. We've had cases shipped to her at her college address in Iowa, which was a hit.

Julian took longer to warm to it -- we got cans at first, and he thought it tasted too metallic, but when we got bottles he decided he liked that version a lot better.

We drank a good bit of it on our '97 vacation while we could, but even before we got out of Kentucky we reached places that had never heard of it.

Originally at this point I asked, ''If anyone out there knows a way we could get it here in Maryland, let me know.'' Well, someone did. The company is now perfectly willing to ship cases of Ale 8 anywhere UPS will take it. There are significant shipping charges, but it's still worth it! We've bought a few cases -- it generally came to just under $35.00 for a two-case order, when all was said and done.

If you'd care to try it, you can order by phone with your Mastercard or Visa -- the number is 606-744-3484, and you need to call between 8:30 and 4:30 Eastern time, Monday through Friday -- or of course you can order from the official Ale-8-One website.

I'm also told you can visit the plant, at 25 Carol Road in Winchester, KY. There are plant tours available, and a gift shop, but I don't know any details. Call in advance, and to get there take the Van Meter Road exit off I-64. Mailing address is:

Ale-8-One Bottling Co.
P.O. Box 645
Winchester KY 40391

Phone: (606) 744-3484

Mentions of Ale-8 are on some travel guides to the Winchester area...

Thanks to the late Rae Montor for her help on this, and to Dan Eastwood for bringing me up to date on a few things.

And thanks also to Frank A. Rogers III, the owner and CEO of the Ale 8 One company!

For those who got here by some method other than the front door -- hi! I'm Lawrence Watt-Evans, and this site is the Misenchanted Page. I'm the author of more than two dozen novels and around a hundred short stories, as well as innumerable articles, comic scripts, poems, and other miscellany -- but all that's under Writing. This portion of the Misenchanted Page is devoted shamelessly to me, my family, and other stuff I'm interested in. I am not affiliated with the Ale-8-One company in any way, and removed e-mail links from this page because I got tired of e-mail from people who have searched on Ale-8, found this page, and assumed it's official. It's not.

There is an official Ale-8-One page now; check it out.

My site is collectively known as the Misenchanted Page, a reference to my bestselling novel The Misenchanted Sword. You're currently in the Trip Reports section of the Personal area, deep in the tangled depths of the site. This particular subpage is a sidebar to a report of our 1997 vacation.

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