“I just love how complex it is. It’s wildly sweet because it is a soda. But there are also other notes like bitterness and spice, similar to ginger. It is something that you can go back for more of.” Brendan Levin, the food development specialist at Stonewall Kitchen, is talking about Moxie.
If you have ever tasted Moxie, you might agree with Levin’s descriptions. Or you might think that the word “complex” is too complimentary for the spicy beverage. Or you might be one of those diehard Moxie fans who order it in cases so they are never caught thirsty. Such is the passion that the soda evokes.
The inventor of Moxie, Dr. Augustin Thompson, was a Civil War veteran and homeopathic doctor born in Union, Maine. He first created “Moxie Nerve Food” in 1876 using gentian root extract taken from a South American plant that was quite rare at the time. Initially claiming the drink would treat “paralysis, nervousness, and insomnia,” Thompson quickly found that Moxie was more successful as a soda than a remedy. By the early 1900s, the popularity of the drink had skyrocketed. It’s said that Calvin Coolidge, Ted Williams, and E.B. White were all fans of Moxie. White even said, “Moxie contains the root of gentian, which is the path to a good life.”
The beverage even inspired a slang term. If you’ve ever referred to someone as “having moxie,” meaning that they are courageous or full of spunk, you are referring back to the drink. The phrase was born out of the ad campaigns for the soda—some of the first advertisements for soda played on the radio—that declared, “You’ve Got Moxie!” Print ads then and now feature a well-dressed man, now called The Moxie Man, pointing outward at the prospective buyer. It’s believed that Thompson took the word from the Abenaki for “dark water,” a word he would have been familiar with growing up in Union.
Today, many Mainers still swear by the stuff, from gruff and gray-haired lobstermen to new “Maine-ah” online influencers. There are stories of transplants moving out of state but bringing cases of Moxie with them so they can still enjoy it where the beverage is less common. As delicious as a cool and bubbly soda is on a warm Maine summer day, you don’t have to only drink Moxie from the bottle. There are other, more adult options for the beverage if you want to add it to your cocktail ingredients.
“To me, there is a burnt caramel up front,” says Andrew Volk, the owner of the cocktail bar Hunt + Alpine in Portland, “and a very complex bitterness and herbal mess. It is its own beast; there are not a lot of other carbonated products out there like it.”
Moxie’s popularity has waxed and waned since it was first produced over a century ago. Initially brewed in Lowell, Massachusetts, and now bottled in New Hampshire, Moxie is deeply tied to New England. Still, Maine has embraced it as the official state soda, celebrating its native son’s invention with an annual Moxie Festival every July in Lisbon. Maine is also home to some of Moxie’s most ardent supporters. It may be that other states, more skeptical of the battle between bitter and sweet going on inside a Moxie bottle, are missing out on a unique ingredient.
At Hunt + Alpine, Volk ensures that Moxie is always in the refrigerator. His favorite Moxie-based beverage is the “Foxy Boxer,” which embraces Moxie’s bitterness and anise flavor by combining it with the equally aromatic Fernet-Branca.
From Volk’s perspective, Moxie’s gentian root makes it perfect for cocktails. “Sodas are usually sugar bombs,” he explains, “but this has more complexity than a mainstream soda.”
For those who don’t care for Moxie’s bitter, spiced flavor profile in a drink, there are other ways to enjoy it. Over the years, it has become a popular ingredient for marinades, glazes, and brines.
“You can do a ham brine with it,” says Levin. “Leave the pork for a few days with some added salt and soy sauce, and then when you pull it out, dry it, and roast it, the ham will have the flavor of the Moxie all the way through it.”
Once again, it is the complexity of Moxie that makes it perfect as an ingredient in a marinade. Combined with sugars and salts, the beverage loses some of the sharpness in its bitter flavors, mellowing with the meat to create the kind of taste that diners can’t quite put their finger on—but keep coming back for.
Rumor has it that Moxie can even spice up a chocolate cake. Added to cake mix, Moxie lends a lightness and slight bite when baking the recipe. Perhaps Maine’s next iconic sweet will be whoopie pies with Moxie.
However you choose to embrace Moxie—whether as a soda, a cocktail base, or the secret ingredient in a ham brine—one thing’s for sure: It takes a certain moxie to drink Moxie! Love it or hate it, this quirky beverage demands attention, much like the Mainers who swear by it. After all, if you can’t handle a little bitterness in your soda, maybe you’re just not cut out for Maine’s official state of mind—or its state soda.
