Hidden Stories of Dunoon Goes POP Ingredients

Rhubarb is one of our favourite plants at Dunoon Goes POP. And it’s an ingredient in our sweet and spicy Rubob and Ginger soft drink that we dedicated to Dunoon Burgh Hall architect Robert Bryden.

What can the ingredients that we use in our soft drinks tell us about our drinks-making heritage? Join our tour and tasting at the new Dunoon Goes POP garden as we develop how to share heritage stories about making drinks.

Flavoursome plants and fascinating stories

Fragrant lavender, spicy ginger, tangy lemon, sweet sugar and tart rhubarb are some of the tasty ingredients used in Dunoon Goes POP soft drinks. Each recipe is inspired by a local character in Dunoon’s history. Come along and hear the stories of the plants and people behind our soft drinks.

We are also growing several local plants in the new garden. Caraway, meadowsweet, burdock, dandelion and valerian all have intriguing stories about our drinks-making heritage in Scotland and beyond. Stories that are not widely known and we’d love to share with more people.

Plants can reveal interesting tales about drinks-making across the centuries, the trade and movement of plants, and our relationship to nature over time. This has inspired our new Dunon Goes POP drinks garden, which is filled with flavoursome plants with fascinating histories.

Become a Dunoon Goes POP heritage storyfinder

Our research is ongoing, and we’d love for more local people to share their stories or get involved with the research. If you enjoy finding hidden stories about plants, or have some of your own, please do get in touch.

What is Dunoon Goes POP?

Dunoon Goes POP is a heritage-inspired soft drinks enterprise based at the POP shop in Dunoon. We want to bring soft drinks production back to Dunoon in a way that minimises our impact on the planet and maximises our positive impact on the community.

We’ll do this by connecting people to the fascinating heritage of soft drinks-making through practical workshops, growing ingredients and gathering local heritage stories. All workshops are free and everyone is welcome.

Thanks to National Lottery players, we have funding from Heritage Lottery Fund to help us work towards a socially enterprising approach to local soft drinks production. This project also supports the 150 years of Dunoon Burgh Hall celebration.

This project is also supported by Dunoon Community Development Trust and Grow Food, Grow Dunoon.

Illustrations by POP shop member Walter Newton.