Bubbling over: on its 100th anniversary, the oldest family-owned soft-drink company in America bests Big Soda.

• Author: Barnes, Marc
• Position: PICTURE THIS

Let's start with the name. What's emblazoned on the iconic glass bottle isn't precisely what's inside--Cheerwine, the soda with a cult following, has zero alcohol. What it does have is the same cherry-flavored proprietary recipe crafted in Salisbury in 1917. Long before Cherry Coke, L.D. Peeler was the first to bottle cherry soda.

Beating back hot North Carolina summers for 100 years, Cheerwine still tastes the same. The concentrate is still made in Salisbury, where Peeler's great-grandson, Cliff Ritchie, oversees three companies with about 500 employees across the Carolinas. Cheerwine owns the trademark and manufactures the concentrate; Carolina Beverage Corp. supplies soft drinks from 10 company-owned distribution centers; and Independent Beverage Corp. makes private-label soft drinks for grocery and drugstore chains and does contract bottling for various other soft-drink companies.

Ritchie, 62, has moved up considerably from his first job at 14 when he sorted and washed returned bottles. His second cousin, Mac McQueen, is vice president for trade development, responsible for private-label business. His two oldest children, Carl Ritchie and Joy Ritchie Harper, are the fifth generation to work in the family business. Their great-great-grandfather bought into Kentucky-based Mint-Cola Bottling, but like all soft-drink bottlers, Peeler was facing sugar shortages because of rationing during World War I. He found that substituting wild-cherry flavoring would make soda sweet enough to keep consumers happy. Pre-Prohibition fervor inspired the name--it's no coincidence that soda titans The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo, not to mention competitors such as Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, Barq's and Big Red, were born in the South as alcoholic beverages largely fell out of favor. Thus, you also had the rise of root beer and ginger ale, which have about as much in common with beer and ale as Cheerwine has with wine.

But soda isn't the only product Salisbury exports. "The biggest thing we sell by far is the original flavor," which can be found in barbecue sauce, ice cream and cake mixes, Ritchie says. Cheerwine paired with a Triad-based company to create a Cheerwine-flavored Krispy Kreme doughnut and, vice versa, a Krispy Kreme-flavored Cheerwine soda that led one fan to tweet, "This is big news for you if a diabetic coma is on your #bucketlist."

Ritchie doesn't disclose sales or production totals of any of his products. Beverage Industry magazine estimated 2015...