Moxie
Maine State Museum
When Coca-Cola assumed ownership of Maine’s official soft drink, Moxie, in 2018, the distinctive soda’s fans were worried, so much so that Coca-Cola issued a statement reassuring the public that it wasn’t going to discontinue it or change its formula and that it was committed to maintaining its northeastern roots. The protective reaction from the devotees of the former “health tonic” reflected the degree to which many New Englanders viewed Moxie not just as a soft drink, but as part of the region’s cultural heritage.
Moxie was born in 1876 as “nerve food,” created by Augustin Thompson, a native of Union and a Civil War veteran, who, after the war ended, enrolled at Hahnemann Homeopathic College in Philadelphia. After receiving his medical degree, he set up a practice in Lowell, Massachusetts and began selling a syrup he claimed could cure a variety of ills, including loss of manhood, paralysis, and softening of the brain. He named his tonic Moxie, a word that may be derived from an Abenaki or other Algonquian-language word meaning “dark water” or “herbal infusion.”
By the mid-1880s, it had transitioned from a cure-all health tonic to a soda pop and became one of the country’s first mass-marketed and most popular soft drinks. But competition from other national brands, particularly Coca-Cola, diminished its popularity, except in Maine and neighboring states where liking its distinctive (some say bitter) gentian-root flavor is a badge of honor, and in some circles, determines one’s “Maineness.”
While not every Mainer’s favorite beverage, it is largely embraced as a regional symbol. Every July, Lisbon holds its annual Moxie Festival that features a Moxie chugging contest and a recipe contest in which cooks use the soda to make everything from meatballs to barbecue sauce. And in Thompson’s home town of Union, the Matthews Museum of Maine Heritage at the fairgrounds is home to 1,000 items of Moxie memorabilia including the Moxie Bottle House, a 33-foot-tall wooden replica of a Moxie bottle that was used as a traveling promotional display in the early 1900s. The museum and its Moxie wing are open to the public in July and August.
Author: Stephanie Bouchard
