Before Cincinnati was a beer town, it was a soda town. In the late 1800s the city was a pharmaceutical hub — home to the oldest pharmacy college west of the Alleghenies — and its apothecaries and confectioners ran soda fountains serving fizzy drinks, some of them pitched as cures. One of those concoctions stuck around: the nectar soda, a pastel-pink blend of vanilla and bitter almond that locals have been sipping since the late 1870s.
The flavour is a balancing act. Bitter almond cuts the sweetness of the vanilla, and the pale pink colour reportedly nods to almond blossoms. Food historian Dann Woellert, author of Cincinnati Candy: A Sweet History, has traced the drink to John Mullane, a confectioner who learned his trade in Quebec City and started pouring nectar sodas downtown in the late 1870s. Woellert's theory for the odd flavour pairing: French Acadians, who settled both Quebec and New Orleans, likely used bitter almond and vanilla in their sweets.
That New Orleans connection is the other twist. The Big Easy is the only other American city that took to nectar sodas, but its tradition died out in the mid-20th century. Cincinnati's didn't — and Woellert argues the Queen City actually popularised them nearly a decade earlier. A 1947 Cincinnati Enquirer article quoted the head of the soda department at Dow Drug, which ran 32 fountains across the metro area, calling nectar one of the chain's most popular flavours.
You can still order one today. Aglamesis Brothers, the ice cream and chocolate shop founded in 1908, has had nectar sodas on the menu from the start — served in old-fashioned fountain glasses with metal handle holders, in a parlour with pink striped awnings and Tiffany lamps. Graeter's, open since 1870, still mixes its original milk-based nectar syrup (refrigerated, never reformulated) with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream and soda water at all of its locations, from Hyde Park to outposts in Chicago, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.
Both shops' versions build the same way: syrup, a dollop of whipped cream, a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream, then soda water and more cream on top. There's even a supermarket descendant — Aglamesis president Randy Young says the bright pink cream sodas sold by Barq's and others borrowed their flavouring from nectar soda.
Who's it for? Anyone who likes eating a city's history rather than reading about it. Older Cincinnatians grew up on these; younger visitors who try one tend to get hooked too. And since Graeter's has spread across the Midwest, you may not even need to detour through Ohio — though the Oakley storefront, a 15-minute drive from downtown, is the most atmospheric place to try one.