Gastonia, NC & Spartanburg, SC

[CitrusCola]

Recently, I took a trip south on I-85. I made a couple stops along the way to see if I could find any interesting drinks.

Near Gastonia, NC, I wanted to get some Caffeine-Free Diet Sundrop (which comes from Choice Beverages), but I also found Diet Cheerwine in 16-oz., deli-style plastic bottles from Choice. As expected, Sundrop was plentiful in that area with the cherry-lemon variety also available.

I thought Spartanburg, SC might be interesting because it's in Coke United territory. The Coke products there were a bit different. I found Orange Fanta Zero, Vault Zero, Diet Barq's Root Beer, and Barq's Creme Soda in a Bi-Lo store that I stopped at. It seems that Coke United distributes Dr Pepper there; I did not see any Pibb. Seeing the 2L Dr Pepper in Coke-style contour bottles alongside Coke and Sprite was a bit odd.

The same store also had the latest Throwback versions of Mountain Dew and Pepsi as well as 20-oz single bottles of Dr Pepper Heritage. I found Cherry Crush there, also.

[fusion]

Gastonia is one of my usual stops when I go through NC, as well as Concord. Choice USA makes pretty much everything in 16oz.

The last time I was in the Spartanburg area, they had Black Cherry Vanilla Coke well after everyone else had ran out of it (obviously this is going back a few).

Pepsi in Charlotte still had Sunkist the last time I went through, and they had all the flavors. Of course that will change once the buyout occurs, and they give up Sunkist (if they haven't already).

Another interesting Sundrop bottler is in Rocky Mount. One of the few places I've ever seen CF Sundrop.

[drpep]

Pepsi in Charlotte, and Cheraw, SC; still has Sunkist as of 10/2009.