Rocky Mountain Soda Embraces the Centennial State

By Kyle Kirves

Ask Drew Fulton, founder of Rocky Mountain Soda Company (RMSC), what brought him to the soda business, and you might get an unlikely answer: booze.

“About 10 years ago, my business partner, Moose (co-founder Chris “Moose” Koons) and I were enjoying some fine libations at Peachtree Distillers in Palisade,” Fulton explains, “and we noticed they were mixing their cocktails with grocery store soda. We said, ’You all gotta do better than this.’” A shrug, a smile, a laugh. “A better cocktail comes from better soda.”

A fan of Peachtree’s Moscow Mules, Fulton dedicated himself to making a pop that would bring a little more heat and spice to the common concoction -- a take on ginger beer that the RMSC faithful know and love. As fate would have it, just after the idea’s inception, Palisade Brewing’s bottling line came up for sale and the turn of events just seemed serendipitous. “The whole thing just kind of came together.”

And that is how Fulton found himself in the soda business. You might say it just kind of bubbled up.

If you bottle anything craft in the state of Colorado you’d better come strong with a name that speaks to the spirit of the people that live here. Geographic designations are always a good choice. “We started talking about calling ourselves Mile High Mixers,” Fulton says, “but then we decided we wanted broader appeal, so we thought Colorado Soda Company. And then we thought, well, why not rep the whole Rocky Mountain region?” Hence the name Rocky Mountain Soda Company.

But that’s only part of it. Each individual soda is tied to a particular place in Colorado - the state perhaps most associated with the Rocky Mountain Experience - Boulder Birch Beer, Evergreen Elderberry, Palisade Peaches (what else?) and Cream, and personal favorite, Pikes Peak Prickly Pear Soda.

Recognizable for its striking newsprint-style throwback labels featuring regional fauna of all stripes and types, each soda’s artwork is Fulton’s own. With an extensive and well-traveled artistic background and education, he knew that creating an enduring image is part and parcel of creating identity. “I actually started on the labels first. I knew what kinds of labels I wanted to make. I finalized the labels before we even had the sodas themselves.”

Each label is an inspired choice – literally. For example, Old Centennial Orange Cream. Fans of a certain local football team can certainly get behind an image of a rampant stallion on an orange label, right? “We wanted something that local fans would recognize and embrace since Denver can’t use Orange Crush in association with the team anymore,” Fulton says. The label art, it turns out, is popular enough that a recent run of woodprints of Old Centennial sold out entirely. “We’d like to get some more merch in place and that’s coming,” he says. He mentions too, a desire to have tours of the company with an old fashioned soda fountain at the end serving high end sodas, yes, but also craft cocktails.

Easily distinguished from the other products on the shelf by their branding alone, what really sets them apart is what’s in the bottle. All RMSC sodas are simply made from a handful of ingredients all of which a second-grader can pronounce and read back to you: water, natural flavor, cane sugar, and non-GMO citric acid. “We did a lot of research on creating all natural sodas. A lot of the mass market stuff incorporates known carcinogenic elements like benzene into the product. We don’t have any of that stuff in there.”

How can you tell that Rocky Mountain Sodas are all natural? The difference is clear.

“We don’t use any preservatives or color additives. Almost all of our sodas are absolutely clear. That can be strange for people who think a grape soda has to be purple. But put our grape up against any of the major brands and we’re the grapiest,” says Fulton. “We craft them with quality in mind. They are vegan and organic, originally made with Colorado beet sugar. When they all went GMO, we found sugar sources that are GMO-free and free from bone char bleaching.” The same is true of Odogave, Rocky Mountain Soda’s other enterprise – sodas created and sweetened using all-natural agave instead of sugar.

Even after 10 years in business, though, it does still come back to booze with these guys (readers rejoice!). “They’re called Lifted Libations,” says Fulton of RMSC’s affiliated new canned cocktail line. “Like our mixers, they are all organic, using organic vodka.” The 5 percent ABV cocktails will be hitting shelves soon, and, in some trial markets, are already available. “They are clean-tasting for sure, and in a variety of flavors. Lime, orange, grapefruit, black currant. They are all fantastic,” Fulton says.

Life, it’s said, is sweet. But for the makers and fans of Rocky Mountain Soda (and Lifted Libations and Odogave) it’s much more than that – it’s all-natural and flavorful besides. As it should be in life, so should it be in soda. Or is it the other way around?

Kyle Kirves drinks beer, plays guitar, runs trails, and manages projects – all with varying degrees of success. While not a craftsman himself, he is quite content writing about the Colorado artisans who create such wonderful things and memorable experiences.