Old Fashioneds are so popular in Wisconsin, the first morning milk from cows actually comes out with brandy, sugar, and bitters. I have to give credit where it is due: Wisconsin is the state that raised me, and its unique drinking traditions were the genesis of wanting to write a book about our drinking traditions throughout America. So thank you, good people of Wisconsin. Your efforts to out-unique everyone else is why I love you so much. I’m not saying I’m playing favorites, but I’m playing favorites.
Wisconsin
It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it, and at the same time to not know anything about it. I had never been to Wisconsin, but all my life I had heard about it, had eaten its cheeses, some of them as good as any in the world. I never saw a country that changed so rapidly, and because I had not expected it everything I saw brought a delight. When I saw it for the first and only time in early October, the air was rich with buttercolored sunlight. I remembered not that I had been told Wisconsin is a lovely state, but the telling had not prepared me. It was a magic day.
—John Steinbeck, in Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Does the State of Wisconsin have strange habits? You tell me, weirdo. I am from Wisconsin, so at any given moment there are “strange” things running through my veins, such as Friday night fish fry, pull tabs (basically, pull tabs are like playing slots, but are available in vending machines in many neighborhood bars), summertime tractor pulls and demo derbies and Bossy Bingo (where a Bingo board is spray-painted on grass and festivalgoers place bets on where Bossy the Cow will make her first dropping), rolling dice, drinking more brandy than the rest of the country combined, saying “Oh, sure” and “U betcha” and “Ya see?” on a regular basis, packing both shorts and a winter coat when vacationing somewhere in the state, calling water fountains “bubblers,” grilling in February, laughing at the thought of anyone using an umbrella when it snows, and serving a beer chaser (aka “snit”) with every Bloody Mary. We take our Bloodys very seriously, so much so that Sobelman’s in Milwaukee, known for its legendary Bloody Mary garnishes, serves one with nine skewers of varying garnishes and a whole three-pound fried chicken on top. The Bloody Beast at Sobelman’s is such an epic Bloody Mary that the bartenders provide you with a pitcher of Miller Lite while they work on making it! And don’t even get us started on how we ask how you like your Old Fashioneds. (Spoiler alert: That comes later in this chapter.)
The state that raised Harry Houdini, Liberace, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Harley-Davidsons also boasts lots of Capitals of the World, such as:
Toilet Paper Capital of the World (Green Bay, also Wisconsin’s oldest city)
Bratwurst Capital of the World (Sheboygan)
Inner Tubing Capital of the World (Somerset)
Troll Capital of the World (Mt. Horeb)
Ginseng Capital of the World (Wausau)
Butter Capital of the World (Reedsburg—my hometown, woot woot!)
Bratwurst wasn’t invented in Wisconsin, but we sure do act like it, and if you want a true Wisconsin food experience, look no further than beer-battered deep-fried cheese curds, available at nearly every bar serving food, or fresh cheese curds from the factory, which squeak when chewed when they’re one to two days old.
Supper clubs rule the roost of dining culture throughout the state. They are places where people go mostly for dinner, and wind down with family or loved ones with a Martini, an Old Fashioned, or a nice bottle of wine—but not without dessert and the option of an ice cream–based Grasshopper, Brandy Alexander, or Pink Squirrel. Following the Brandy Old Fashioned and beer chasers with every Bloody Mary, ice cream cocktails finish out the Holy Trifecta of the Wisconsin cocktail canon.
Not only has food grown more artisanal here, but bars are celebrating more local ingredients. Great cocktail dens in Milwaukee, such as Boone and Crockett, the Phoenix, and Lost Whale are measuring creative collaborations with terrific neighborhood restaurants such as Bay View’s Goodkind, with such unforgettably named cocktails like “Get Out of My Room, Mom!”
Madison, the state’s capital, has developed a healthy cocktail community in the past ten years, with the Robin Room, Gib’s, Mint Mark, and Merchant shaking the shackles of a beer-focused community (don’t get me wrong, though, I always love visiting the Great Dane brew pub, which gave me my start in the bartending world), and there are some truly innovative cocktail programs attached to wonderful restaurants, such as L’Etoile, Heritage Tavern, the Tornado Club Steak House (where I highly recommend starting with a cold, bone-dry Martini). Visit the Old Fashioned on the capital square for—wait for it—Old Fashioneds until the cows come home, and Natt Spil, an essential downtown spot specializing in “Chinese Pizza Disco,” offering dim sum, terrific DJs, and endless neighborhood bar warmth.
Now let’s see which one of the kids wants to get lucky on the pull tabs.
I’m kind of fascinated by Wisconsin’s drinking traditions, actually; the way they drink their Bloody Marys with beer on the side; the consumption of American brandy; the blended ice cream drinks; I think it’s really awesome.
—Jeffrey Morgenthaler, Clyde Common and Pépé Le Moko (Portland, Oregon)
WISCONSIN SPIRIT
Long ago, people started pouring brandy in their Old Fashioneds, and the trend mushroomed into a statewide cocktail worn with pride on its sleeve. Korbel produces one-third of its brandy for Wisconsin alone. Wisconsin is smack dab in the middle of the Brandy Belt (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan), and people are also happy to mix it with their Manhattans, their coffee, and their euchre card games.
State Line is a new distillery on the east side of Madison. They make an excellent botanical gin with sage, and J. Henry is making great whiskey in Dane County as well.
—Troy Rost, co-owner, 1847 at the Stamm House (Madison)
STATE FACT
The badger, Wisconsin’s state animal, doesn’t actually refer to the badger animal, but the miners in the 1820s who dug holes and burrowed inside to keep warm.
You can always spot a Wisconsin bartender by looking at their red-stained fingertips from grabbing cherries in the cherry juice.
—Troy Rost, co-owner, 1847 at the Stamm House (Madison)
WISCONSIN’S OLDEST BAR
The historic 1847 at the Stamm House has recently been renovated to preserve the integrity of its nineteenthcentury architecture, while offering some welcome upgrades. The space once served as an inn and stagecoach stop on the Old Sauk River Trail from Milwaukee to Minneapolis, and now it serves lake-caught fish, pierogies, and fine steaks, with a cocktail menu offering contemporary updates to well-known classics, such as the Stamm House Sidecar, a variation of a New York Sour.
WISCONSIN’S PRETTY OLD BAR
While not quite the oldest bar in the state (it’s pretty close), I had to mention this gem. One can watch the Packers play on a Sunday, crank the jukebox or catch some live music in the Walnut Room, play some bar dice, or grab a basket of free, fresh, tasty popcorn. If you meet a Bartels while you’re at the bar, chances are that’s my brother. He lives just down the road. He’s probably drinking a beer and playing Golden Tee.
WISCONSIN BUCKET LIST BAR
Nelsen’s Hall & Bitters Club on Washington Island (upstate and next to Lake Michigan) pours shots of Angostura for its customers, stemming from founder Tom Nelsen’s efforts to avoid Prohibition and offer the high-alcohol-by-volume Trinidadian bitters as tonic for stomach issues. If you take a shot while attending the Hall, you earn the privilege of adding your name in a fifty-year ledger and receiving a card denoting club membership, and what looks like a stain from the bartender’s filthy hands on the edge of the card is actually an intentional bitters thumbprint. Once initiated into the Bitters Club, you are “considered a full-fledged islander and are entitled to mingle, dance, etc. with all the other islanders.”
Nelson’s Bitters Club Certificate reads as such:
This certifies that YOUR NAME has taken ‘the cure’ by consuming the prescribed measure of bitters and as such is a fully initiated member of the Bitters Club. You are now considered a full-fledged Islander and entitled to mingle, dance, etc., with all the other Islanders.
—Bitters Pub & Restaurant
What does it mean when kids say, “That’s dope”?
—Ma Bartels (Reedsburg)
My first cocktail was a vodka and cranberry juice. I was on a boat on Lake Michigan. I thought it was the height of sophistication. That doesn’t count the sips of Tom and Jerrys I had growing up as a youngster in Milwaukee.
—Robert Simonson (born in Milwaukee), author of The Martini, A Proper Drink, The Old Fashioned, and 3-Ingredient Cocktails (Brooklyn, NY)
WISCONSIN BUCKET LIST BAR #2:
Every great state worth its weight in snow salt needs a steady local bar or two to keep us warm when the winter wind picks up, and for this, look no further “The ‘Bou.” Apart from being the bar where I was accidentally punched in the head by an ex-Navy Seal when trying to break up a kerfuffle, the Caribou is located on Madison’s near east side and situated next to a Laundromat. The Caribou bartenders there take care of a long line of drinkers seated and standing at the bar, all Wisco-thirsty, and on top of keeping the peace and slinging the beverages, they work the grill. There is a bartender who works there named Winslow, the mustachioed marvel with a healthy Wisconsin accent, who treats everyone with quintessential hospitality whether there are two people in the room or it’s a packed house of four or five dozen people, and he does it alone, with ‘bou burgers, French fries, and cheese curds for the whole fam damily.
My goals are:
To eat without looking hungry
To drink without acting drunk
To love the way I first loved
And to dance in a way that looks like I can hear the music.
—Adam Benedetto, friend, bicycle superhero, a sheriff who fights crime, and a damn fine poet (Wausau)
Wisconsin is the holy of weirdness. I tried to make a whiskey Old Fashioned at a guest shift in Milwaukee once, and the guest looked at me like I was the son of Satan. Green Bay drinks more rye per capita because a local doctor wrote an editorial about its health benefits. Pretty sure Madison still holds the record for the most Old GrandDad bonded per capita. Nelsen’s Hall was slinging shots of Angostura through Prohibition. When I was on the spirit expo loop, all the reps would double the amount of product they brought for Wisco. The state goes hard.
—Marco Zappia, bar director, Martina and Colita (Minneapolis, MN)
WISCONSIN BEVERAGE
Not only is Wisconsin famous for Nelsen’s Hall & Bitters Club, where shots of Angostura bitters are de rigueur, Wisconsin is the US headquarters of the Brandy Old Fashioned cocktail, which requires a couple of dashes of bitters in every drink, thus catapulting Angostura’s popularity throughout Wisconsin. Angostura bitters—arguably the only bitters bottle perched on every bar in America—has an alcohol base and is 44.7 percent ABV, but it’s actually considered a food additive and flavoring agent. I don’t know what kind of numbers they’re using in Trinidad and Tobago, but keep ’em coming.
There’s just nothing like Bryant’s Cocktail Lounge in Milwaukee. I love the fish tank behind the bar. It feels like you’re going to a cocktail party at your grandma’s house in the 1960s.
—Jeremy Oertel (born in Wisconsin), co-owner of Donna (Brooklyn, NY)
WISCONSIN BEVERAGE
Top Note has been creating top-notch tonics since 2015, with owner and botanist Mary Pellettieri using her years working in brewery labs as inspiration to continue working with the sociability of beverage through nonalcoholic mixers, creating tonic syrups, such as ginger and bitter orange, and sparkling beverages like the awardwinning Indian tonic, made with gentian root. Mary is constantly working on levitating the flavors we celebrate, and providing healthful and mindful nonalcoholic alternatives so people can enjoy special beverages when the moments arrive. As the signs and T-shirts say: “Drink Wisconsinbly.”
We like it here.
—Ad from Larry’s Drinking Establishment, the bar my uncle Larry owned (Reedsburg)
WISCONSIN COCKTAIL BAR
Bryant’s gets consistent recognition as one of the best cocktail destinations in Wisconsin for a reason. It’s amazing! The menu is enormous! Drinking there feels like you have one foot in cocktail history, before craft cocktails started turning corners in every little city in America over the past ten years, and the bartenders there execute their cocktails with masterful deftness and enduring Wisconsin hospitality. My experiences at Bryant’s make me think of surgeons performing for an audience. They’re skilled enough that the operations could be executed blindfolded—but always with an effortless smile.
Maybe I have been in Wisconsin too long, but I would say the most American cocktail is the Old Fashioned. You can get it anywhere, but the differences are diverse and regional, just like America itself.
—John Dye, owner, Bryant’s Lounge, At Random, and Jazz Estate (Milwaukee)
WISCONSIN BRANDY OLD FASHIONED
A Wisconsin Brandy Old Fashioned is made with brandy, bitters, muddled orange and cherry, and sugar. The true test of a properly ordered Wisconsin Old Fashioned is having the bartender ask, “Sweet, sour, or press?” If you take it sweet, that’s a splash of 7Up on top, sour is a pre-packaged sour mix or Squirt (widely used in many Wisconsin bars), and press, well, here is where we get regional. Press is half soda, half 7Up, and that is where Wisconsin is a step above other states in its unique drinking tradition. Lake Delton’s Ishnala Supper Club (Wisconsin’s number-one supper club and my first job working in a restaurant) and Madison’s Old Fashioned on the Capitol Square make about a billion Old Fashioneds every year. All of those Wisconsinites can’t be wrong, so why not give this recipe a try?
1 to 2 maraschino cherries
1 orange wheel
1 sugar cube, or ¼ ounce simple syrup (1:1 sugar to water)
3 dashes Angostura bitters
2 ounces brandy (Korbel is a Wisconsin classic, or elevate the game with Bertoux)
A splash of sour mix, soda water, and/or 7Up
Garnishes: 1 maraschino cherry and 1 orange wedge
Muddle the cherries, orange wheel, sugar, and bitters in a chilled double Old Fashioned glass until the sugar dissolves, adding a splash of water, if desired. Fill the glass with ice and add the brandy. Top with the soda water, sour mix, 7Up, or press (half soda, half 7Up). Skewer the cherry and orange and add to the drink.
Being steeped in Wisconsin culture, I grew up with cocktail hour. My grandfather brought a whole bar kit when they visited us and he acted as the bartender... always Manhattans, Old Fashioneds, Gimlets, Martinis, and Kiddie Cocktails, etc. Wisconsin really is a time capsule for old school cocktail tradition even if some technique and ingredients have become frayed. But resurgent Supper Clubs are cleaning it up. There’s nothing better than after-dinner ice cream drinks at the supper club: Pink Squirrels, Grasshoppers, Brandy Alexanders. So great.
—Todd Appel, bar and cocktail consultant (Chicago, IL)
In 2018, after visiting Lambeau Field, I visited Roepke’s Village Inn in Charlesburg, Wisconsin, and got the best Brandy Old Fashioned Sweet I’d ever had. The bar manager had done something extraordinary and made this kind of “Angostura Syrup,” and it was incredible. Not only was the cocktail great, but the bartender working cranked out an entire round for our group in less than a minute. Oh, and they were $4.50 each... Only in Wisco.
—Mike Henderson (born in Wisconsin), beverage development specialist, Breakthru Beverage Group (Denver, CO)
MISSED FLIGHT HEARD
Merchant opened the cocktail floodgates in Madison, and every time I visit I am continually impressed with its creative cocktails and engaging bar staff. Thor created this cocktail for the fall 2014 menu at Merchant. Scarlet Tea, which offers blueberry-cherry-floral-hibiscus notes, is not an ingredient often seen in cocktails. A nice feather in the cap of this drink is the Bittercube bitters, from a Wisconsin-based company founded in 2009. Go Bucks! Go Brewers! Go Pack Go!
1 ounce Del Maguey Vida mezcal
¾ ounce Bonal GentianeQuina (or Punt e Mes)
¾ ounce Scarlet Tea syrup (recipe follows)
¾ ounce fresh lime juice
1 dash Bittercube Blackstrap bitters
Garnish: lime peel curl or lime wheel
Shake the ingredients with ice until chilled. Strain into a chilled coupe glass and serve up, garnished with the lime.
Also, what does it mean when the kids say something’s “sick”?
—Ma Bartels (Reedsburg)
My favorite American dive bar? I’d have to go with Woody’s in Madison, WI, an old union bar. Built in an elongated horseshoe, the bar can’t hold more than fifteen people probably. A really long shuffleboard runs the length of the bar. The aged proprietress may or may not have her wig on straight. Someone’s gonna talk to you or comment on something you’re wearing or doing. Someone’s going to be fresh from going to court and have a story. It’s iconic.
—Andre Darlington, author of The New Cocktail Hour and Booze & Vinyl
Scarlet Tea Syrup
Makes about 4 cups
5 grams scarlet tea (Rishi preferably)
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups hot water
2 cups sugar
Combine the tea, cinnamon stick, and hot water in a medium saucepan and place over medium heat. After 5 minutes, add the sugar and stir until it dissolves. When the mixture reaches its boiling point, remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. Strain and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
The first time I was really impressed with a cocktail was at Bryant’s Cocktail Lounge. I never had a bartender just ask me about flavors before asking me what I wanted. He made me a Last Word and it was delicious. It was at that moment that I had been bartending for several years and realized I didn’t know a lick about making a proper cocktail. I really started to learn what it meant to make cocktail from Bryant’s.
—Thor Messer, bar manager, Merchant (Madison)