Two new sodas produced by Admiral Beverage Corp. in Worland, and available locally, use sugar made from Wyoming beets.Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback are being sold locally after being bottled by the Worland company using sugar produced by Wyoming Sugar — another Worland company.

Cal Jones, CEO of Wyoming Sugar, said the local bottling arrangement ties in with a national Pepsi campaign to produce sodas with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. The “Throwback” sodas should be available for about eight weeks this spring, he said, but there's a chance Pepsi officials may extend the national campaign.

Citing his company's “good relationship locally” with Admiral Beverage Corp., Jones said it's a good example of “one local business helping another local business.”

The beverage rollout marked the first time since 1984 that regionally-produced sugar has sweetened a major-brand soft drink. The sodas are being distributed throughout the region and are available at Powell retail stores.

Wyoming Sugar contracts with sugar-beet growers in the Big Horn Basin in the Worland area as far north as the Emblem bench, Jones said. The company was the first in the United States to switch entirely to commercial production of Roundup Ready beets two years ago.

“I'm of the age that I remember when Pepsi used to taste this way,” said Jones about the “new” sodas. “It's got a distinct taste, and to me it's good. It seems smoother and has a little more pizzazz. It just doesn't seem as heavy.”

Sugar had been used to sweeten soft drinks until the 1980s, when tariffs and sugar quotas drove up prices and bottlers turned to the less-expensive high-fructose corn syrup.