Vintage NOS Caravan Orange Soda Bottle Cap 🍊 Piedmont Cheerwine • NC • 1970s

Remember Caravan Orange Soda? 🍊 Vintage NOS 1970s Bottle Cap, Piedmont Cheerwine, NC

Size: 1 1/4"

🍊 Original NOS Caravan Orange Soda bottle cap from the 1970s, bottled by Piedmont Cheerwine Bottling Company of Salisbury, North Carolina, the home of Cheerwine. Unused and uncrimped, preserved from original production.

🐪 What's on it

A whole desert scene on a cap an inch and a quarter across: a line of five riders on camels crossing the sand past a palm tree and a pyramid, with birds wheeling overhead, CARAVAN arched across the top and ORANGE SODA below. Then the fine print: "Contains carbonated water, sugar and/or corn sweetener, citric acid, food starch, ester gum, sodium benzoate (preservative), natural flavors, artificial color, brominated vegetable oil." Around the skirt: "Bottled by Piedmont Cheerwine Bottling Co., Inc. Salisbury, N.C. 28144." Silver on orange, and it's a great-looking little cap. Like every uncrimped crown, it measures 1 1/4 inches across.

🍒 The Cheerwine people

Salisbury's soda story starts in 1913, when L.D. Peeler and some other Rowan County businessmen started a Mint Cola bottling franchise in the basement of Peeler's store on Council Street, near the train depot. When Mint Cola went bankrupt, Peeler bought the franchise and built the Carolina Beverage Corporation on it. Then came 1917 and a wartime sugar shortage. A flavor salesman from St. Louis sold Peeler a wild cherry flavor that needed less sugar, and he turned it into a deep burgundy soda he called Cheerwine, "cheer" for how it made you feel and "wine" for the color. The first slogan was "For health and pleasure." Today it's "Uniquely Southern Since 1917," and the company is still run by Peeler's descendants, the Ritchie family.

Cheerwine was always the star, but the Salisbury plant bottled other flavors too, and Caravan Orange is one of them, with the Cheerwine name right there on the skirt.

📅 How old is it?

The five-digit ZIP code, 28144, means no earlier than July 1963. And look at that last ingredient, brominated vegetable oil. BVO was what kept the citrus oils in an orange soda from floating to the top. The FDA took it off its "generally recognized as safe" list in 1970 and later allowed it only at 15 parts per million, and in 2024 it banned BVO outright, effective August 2, 2024. So this little cap lists an ingredient you won't find in an American soda anymore. Along with the "sugar and/or corn sweetener" wording, it all fits the 1970s.

🏡 Display

Great in a cap collection, a Carolina soda display, or next to a Cheerwine bottle. The camel caravan makes it one of the best-looking orange caps I've got.