Tower Root Beer first cooled a New England August before WWI. The company thrived during Prohibition, and experienced many ups and downs over the past almost-a-century, which are recounted in the fascinating History page on their website. The same perils that beset Tower also affected the many other family soda bottlers of New England (two of my grandfather's brothers had a soda bottling company in Yonkers, NY); reading that history you know how fortunate we are to still have the survivors like Tower and Yacht Club Sodas in Rhode Island.

Tower now makes a diet and a regular root beer. I bought a bottle of the regular root beer in Concord at The Cheese Shop to have with a bit of cheese for a picnic lunch on Concord Common. Concord itself it like an old-time root beer: the busy market center, the Revolutionary history, the great writers, the scenic location and the old graveyard looking down on the Common...it's a swirl of sensations.

The root beer was like that, many flavors, and not all the familiar ones. Domenick Cusolito came up with a more Italian style for his root beer, for example replacing the traditional American vanilla with anisette. Domenick's grandson Larry uses that old recipe. That's great, because it works really well!

Tower Root Beer got a great writeup by Genevieve Rajewski in Edible Boston's Summer 2010 issue. You can follow them on Twitter at @TowerRootBeer and they announce their visits to farmers' markets and other events at their Facebook page.