One of my earliest posts ever was about an English ginger beer, way back on June 9th, 2013 (along with another, fruity flavored English soft drink). Anyway, let's explore another. This one was from Fentiman's, out of Hexham, Northumberland, U.K.
Fentiman's is moderately old, dating back to 1905. At this time, Thomas Fentiman was offered a ginger beer recipe in return for a granted loan, to an unidentified person or persons. Thomas was an iron puddler by trade. If you didn't know (I didn't), an iron puddler was a person who converted pig iron into wrought iron, via a furnace. Anyway, this unnamed loanee didn't repay the money to Thomas, so he set about making and selling the ginger beer himself. (Evidently the life of an iron puddler wasn't very lucrative.) Fentiman started by selling his ginger beer door to door, using a distinctive ceramic container. The label on this container had a picture of a dog, which was Thomas's faithful dog named Fearless. (Fearless can be seen on the label today, in fact.) The company thrived for decades. Alas, in the mid 1960's sales had plummeted, and the company closed. However, in 1988 Eldon Robson, who was the great-grandson of Thomas Fentiman, reopened the business, using some of the original recipes. The company has been reinvigorated, and is now doing well. Currently, aside from the flagship ginger beer, Fentiman's also markets various sorts of lemonade, cola drinks, a lemon shandy, several kinds of tonic waters, a dandelion and burdock concoction, and a sparkling elderflower beverage. Fentiman's has expanded in scope, too, as its wares are now exported to Japan, several nations in South America, Canada, Russia, and the U.S. There are at least 2 manufacturing centers in the U.S., one in Pennsylvania, and one in Delaware.
As far as controversy goes, I encountered two. Firstly, in the past year or so Fentiman's has started using an artificial sweetener, notably steviol glycosides. Some customers are irate about this, and think it's negatively affected the taste of the drinks that use it. Secondly, one of Fentiman's products, their Victorian Lemonade, has an alcohol content of between 0.3-0.5%. The state of Maine in the U.S. prohibited sales because of this, even though it would be almost impossible for even a small child to become intoxicated off of this, given its small, but discernable booze content.
Fentiman's ginger beer & muddled lime: This drink came in a small bottle, only 6.7 ounces (or 200 mL). It had a dull yellow color, and a ginger-y odor. The flavor was pretty good. Nice ginger spice bite. Not as great as America's Cock 'n Bull, or England's Idris Fiery Ginger Beer (again, see my post on June 9th, 2013), but tasty. If you like ginger flavors, I would definitely recommend this to you.
Finally, if you're a fan of the Netflix series "The Last Kingdom," as I am, Fentiman's comes from a region that's mentioned throughout the show. Northumberland (aka "Northumbria," in ancient times), is the area where star Uhtred is originally from. His home castle/town of Bamburgh/Bebbanburg is in this part of England.
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