Dublin Bottling Works

Texas Monthly says Dublin Dr Pepper began in 1891, when the local businessman Sam Houston Prim tried the drink in Waco, where Charles Alderton had invented it six years earlier. Prim began making it at a plant called Dublin Bottling Works, later renamed the Dr Pepper Bottling Company. Texas Monthly tells how a teenager hired in the 1930s, Bill Kloster, worked up from sorting bottles to general manager and took over from the Prim family in 1991.

When the industry moved to high-fructose corn syrup in the 1970s, the Dublin plant kept sweetening with Imperial Pure Cane Sugar. Texas Monthly says the drink built a cultlike following. Dr Pepper Snapple Group, by then the owner of the Dr Pepper brand, allowed the plant to sell in a limited territory.

In June 2011 Dr Pepper Snapple sued in federal court, claiming the bottler had broken the distribution agreement and infringed its trademark. Dublin countersued in August. The settlement, announced in January 2012, ended the relationship, and Dublin Dr Pepper was no more. Texas Monthly marked the end with an obituary. The plant went on selling its own sodas made with pure cane sugar, and its website calls it the oldest bottling facility in Texas. Its retail store is open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m.