Walk down the soda aisle of any grocery store or big box retailer, and you’ll find an assortment of grape offerings. While they’re all slightly different regarding flavor, nearly every last one of them at least shares the familiar and enticing dark purple color.

However, over a century ago, the artificially flavored grape soda we grew up with did not exist in stores. It would take a man from Arkansas with a mission of making the best grape soda to popularize the flavor we know today and define what “grape” tastes like in sodas and candies.