Moxie Soda

Since 2004, Freebird has had the dubious distinction of being one of the only purveyors in New York City of Moxie Soda. Moxie, allegedly the oldest soft drink brand in the country (purportedly invented in 1876), is a strange brew flavored by gentian root and advertised once as a cure for dipsomania.  Now it’s chiefly an inside joke for Mainers who throw yearly parties in its honor and challenge diehards to chugging contests. We refrain from commenting on its restorative or refreshment benefits, though we recognize its medicinal taste masks no special health cure. As early as 1888 The Medical Era journal noted any such claims for this “flavored water” were essentially “a fraud, a delusion and a snare.” Moxie’s inventor, one Dr. Augustin Thompson, may have eventually stopped peddling it as a nerve tonic, but that special bitter/sweet tang lives on.  In his time traveling novel, 11/22/63, Stephen King speaks to “the faint odor of Moxie, a smell that has always reminded me—probably because I belong to the unfortunately handicapped majority—of Musterole, the fabulously stinky stuff my mother insisted on rubbing into my throat and chest when I had a cold.”