The Sommelier of Soda Pop

When he was 2, Danny Ginsburg began collecting lids of baby food jars. He had the serial numbers on the tops so well memorized that he could tell what kind of baby food was in a particular jar just by the number. Skeptical relatives used to quiz him when they came to visit; he never missed.

By the time he was 4, Ginsburg was so bored with baby food that he went to the recycling center and redeemed his lids. Soon after, on a hiking trip with his family, he spotted a Pepsi bottle cap on the ground. He picked it up. “I can still picture what it looked like,” says Ginsburg. “It was one of those with the cork in it and it had red letters. A capital P and a small epsi . I remember my mother saying, ‘Oh, why don’t you collect these?’ ” He laughs. “I’m sure she regrets saying it.”

By the time he was 7, Ginsburg was a hardcore collector. “I counted my entire collection and wrote down all the different places and brands.” he says. “Then I began sending letters all over the world. Getting pen pals.” The need to learn a few foreign languages to write to his new friends didn’t faze Ginsburg. He eventually got a degree in German at USC, with a minor in Russian and equivalencies in French, Italian and Portuguese.

If you’re getting the idea that Ginsburg is a bit eccentric, you’re right. Today, Ginsburg is 28 years old and has 3,250,000 bottle caps in his collection--including that first Pepsi top. He has 42,000 varieties of caps from 154 countries and 27 territories. He says that there is someone who has a collection bigger than his. “But,” Ginsburg explains, “he’s 80 years old. He was collecting before I was born. He lives in Denmark. Anyway, I think I have the most countries.”

Passionate as he is about pop tops, Ginsburg’s true love is what’s inside. As a teen-ager, he drove around the country looking for beverage warehouses to discover new brands of soda pop. He bought cases of the stuff just for his own pleasure. It quickly reached a point where his friends were asking him to buy soda for them too. When a couple of attorneys heard what he was doing and begged him to supply sodas for their office, Ginsburg started his business: “Real Soda in Real Bottles, Ltd.” His motto is: “If it’s not a real soda, in a real bottle, no can do.”

“I’ll drink pop out of a can,” he says passionately, “just about as quickly as an orthodox Rabbi will eat a ham sandwich. When I think of a goooood soda, it’s a nice, long neck bottle that stays cold while you are drinking it.”

Ginsburg is so anti-aluminum that when he had roommates, he put a clause in the lease forbidding them to bring canned soft drinks into his house. “There’s all this talk about aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease,” he says. “Sometimes I wonder if people are forgetting about bottles because they’ve been drinking out of cans too long.”

Ginsburg sells about 200 kinds of bottled sodas, mainly to delis, coffee houses and people with antique vending machines. “I have an aesthetic eye,” he says. “When I know what someone’s decor is, I usually know which product will fit.”

Ginsburg--who drinks 8 to 10 bottled sodas, fruit juices and mineral waters a day--refuses to sell any of his rare bottles. These include the 12-ounce regular and diet Pepsis, diet Mountain Dews, Diet Sprites, or the Pop Shop Diet Red Cream Sodas. Never mind the Coca Cola he brought back from Nepal, the Fanta green Cream Sodas from Bangkok, sarsaparillas from Indonesia, the Namibian Pepsis, the Soviet Baykals, or any of the blue cream sodas from Brainard, Minn. “It turns me on to have everything,” he says, “and I won’t let anyone have it. They are strictly my own private reserve.”

Ginsburg drives some 4,000 miles a month delivering (and looking for) sodas; he says his goal is to bring quality and fun back into soda.

“This business drives me,” he says. “I just go where it takes me.”

Real Soda in Real Bottles, Ltd., (310) 378-1821. Minimum free delivery is five cases.