Wintergreen soda was a flavored carbonated beverage once popular in North America. The flavoring that was added to wintergreen soda water was "nominally made out of teaberry leaves, or wintergreen."[1] Other regional common names used to describe Gaultheria procumbens included mountain berries, wintergreen plums, or checked berries. Wintergreen soda may have originally been a homemade foodstuff but was ultimately one of the many flavors listed in the catalogs of flavoring companies serving late 19th-century soda fountain proprietors.[2]
Carrie Giddings, a Civil War-era U.S. Army wife, relied on homemade lemon and wintergreen soda waters when she was called upon to host important guests.[3] American nature writer Edwin Way Teale recalled it as a favorite of his childhood in Indiana: "From early days wintergreen was a flavor that gave me my greatest delight. At the ornate Canditorium, on Main Street in Michigan City, I used to reach a seventh heaven and enter in when a wintergreen soda, with coral-pink foam, was set before me."[4]