Two months ago I visited Underground Kitchen, a wonderful restaurant in downtown Madison, to write about their cocktails for Madison Magazine. Sadly, the restaurant was destroyed by a fire last month. They’re accepting donations to rebuild; you can also visit their Facebook page or websterstreetfire.info to find more ways to help.

In the meantime, here’s the column I wrote, which would have appeared in the magazine’s August issue.

The Alchemist

They don’t call him the “bar witch” for nothing.

Hastings Cameron, the sorcerer behind the fabled cocktails at Underground Kitchen, uses ingredients like beet juice, cardamom and lemon curd to satisfy the thirsty legions that flock to his bar. His menu changes frequently, with an emphasis on seasonal produce and locally crafted spirits.

New for summer is the #44, a breezy sparkler made with cava and sweet, citrusy rhubarb liqueur. Cameron batched the liqueur this spring, using a vintage Italian recipe as a template.

“The idea was to make an aromatic bitter,” he says, “but also a digestive that can be sipped on its own.”

The cocktail is fizzy and refreshing, just the thing you’d want on a hot summer day. And the pale pink liqueur, served over ice in a cordial glass, is sublime.

Recipe: #44

For the rhubarb liqueur:
17 oz. (500 ml) vodka
8.5 oz. (250 ml) sauvignon blanc
1 lb. rhubarb, finely chopped
1 orange peel, zested
6 artichoke leaves
¾ cup sugar
2 cloves
½ star anise

For the cocktail:
Sparkling wine, such as cava
Lemon twist, for garnish

To make the liqueur, combine all ingredients in a wide-mouthed glass jar. Seal and let macerate five to seven days in a cool place (no need to refrigerate). To make the cocktail, combine 1 ½ to 2 oz. liqueur with 2 to 3 oz. sparkling wine. Garnish with a lemon twist.

An Ian's Pizza employee hands out free pizza to protesters at the Capitol on Feb. 21. Credit: Emily Mills on Flickr

As protesters filed into Ian’s Pizza on State St. Monday afternoon, an employee’s voice crackled over the P.A. system.

“Just a reminder, folks. Everything here—the pizza, the drinks—is free!”

A cheer erupted in the packed restaurant. Then the music came back on—“Rock the Casbah” by the Clash—and employees resumed distributing pizza and Coke to the crowd.

In the last week, tens of thousands of people have converged on the Wisconsin capital to protest Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill, which would cut most collective bargaining rights for public employees. While the fate of the bill remains uncertain, one thing is clear—the protesters in Madison won’t go hungry.

Since late last week, a nearly endless stream of Ian’s Pizza boxes has poured into the Capitol, paid for by people in such far-flung places as California, South Carolina, Finland, Egypt and Kenya.

As of Monday afternoon, Ian’s had received donation orders from 17 countries and every state in the U.S. [As of Feb. 27, that number was 62 countries.] Ian Gurfield, the restaurant’s founder, estimates his business has received over $10,000 in donated pizza orders.

“It’s been pretty wild,” Gurfield said. “I don’t think anyone thought this would turn into what’s going on now.”

An Ian's employee distributes pizza to protesters outside the Capitol on Feb. 21. Credit: Gavno the Ugly on Flickr

Gurfield says it began around 3:30 a.m. last Wednesday, when a protester called Ian’s on State St. and asked if the restaurant would donate their end-of-night leftovers to people sleeping at the Capitol.

The employees on duty agreed, and the following day, a blogger mentioned the donation on the Huffington Post. Donation calls to Ian’s began trickling in. By Saturday, the restaurant had received so many donated orders that it shut down normal operations and began delivering and making pizza solely for protesters, who poured into the restaurant to rest and eat.

Protesters in line for free pizza at Ian's on State St. Credit: akagoldfish on Flickr

On Monday afternoon Jesica Johnson, 25, took a break from marching and settled into a booth at Ian’s with two friends. She nibbled a slice of the restaurant’s signature mac ‘n’ cheese pizza as her German Shepherd, wearing a purple Service Employees International Union t-shirt, nosed for scraps under the table.

“I’ve been at the Capitol for days, marching in cold weather,” Johnson said. “Knowing I could come in here and grab a hot piece of pizza has kept me going.”

Protesters grab free slices of Ian's pizza at the snowy Feb. 26 rally. Credit: Emily Mills on Flickr

No amount of advertising could capture such public goodwill. Thousands of well-wishers have left comments on Ian’s Facebook page. On the restaurant’s Yelp page a commenter from San Francisco wrote, “Five stars for providing a channel for international support during the pro-labor protests of 2011.”

But not everyone is feeling so warm and fuzzy. Some have questioned why Ian’s—which is profiting from pro-protester business—has remained neutral and chosen not to donate pizzas or match contributions. Others have called for a boycott of Ian’s and asked supporters to patronize other local businesses, such as Mermaid Café and the Willy St. Co-op, which have explicitly voiced their support for the protests.

Brendan Wilson, 22, an Ian’s supervisor who has spent the last two days working 13-hour shifts, said the work of his staff should be proof of their support.

“We (the workers) don’t always get to choose who we serve or how we serve,” Wilson wrote on Ian’s Facebook page in response to a comment questioning the restaurant’s loyalties. “But when given the chance we do the best with what we have—that’s part of worker solidarity too.”

Gurfield acknowledged that the politics of the situation have made things tricky. “My own personal politics are in line with the protesters,” he said. “However, we have [employees] from both sides of the political spectrum… [and] we’ve never donated money to a political candidate or cause.”

But Gurfield added that if Gov. Walker’s bill passes, his business would feel its effects. “A lot of people who eat at Ian’s are associated with the university or are state workers,” he said. “I mean, this [bill] will have a profound effect on all of us.”

He said he’s considering introducing a weekly 8 percent discount for state employees in the event that the bill passes. “If they’re going to lose 8 percent of their pay,” Gurfield said, “we’re going to compensate for that.”

Any savvy interior designer knows lighting  is everything. But can the right illumination convince kids to eat more vegetables?

Ann Ferris, a public health and health policy professor at the University of Connecticut in Farmington, thinks it might. In October she received a $30,000 USDA grant to fund her project, called “Drawing Attention to Healthy Choices with Lighting.”

The study, which Ferris and her team will implement over a four-month period, will manipulate cafeteria lighting in two Connecticut middle schools. Lighting will be adjusted to emphasize fruits and vegetables, and researchers will assess whether the changes affect student food choice behavior.

The project uses behavioral economics, a field that combines psychology and economics. Behavior economists study what influences individuals’ decision-making, and how the presentation of an option, not just its relative valence, affects the choices people make.

Behavior economics isn’t a new field, but it didn’t really take off until the 1990s, according to David Laibson, a prominent Harvard behavioral economist. Now behavioral economics is trendy, Laibson says, a claim that is borne out by the grants awarded by the USDA this year.

In October the agency introduced a series of special awards that would form the foundation of a USDA research program that uses behavioral economics to study children’s nutrition programs. The agency awarded $2 million to 15 projects, including $1 million to the newly established Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs.

There’s a good chance Ferris’s project will succeed in getting kids to eat more fruits and vegetables, based on the success of similar initiatives. The Cornell researchers, for example, found that when ice cream treats are stored in freezers with closed, non-transparent tops, students eat fewer of them. The Cornell team also found:

• students were more likely to eat healthy foods when such foods had descriptive names, such as “creamy corn” instead of “corn”
• students ate more salad and fruit when salad bars were moved to bottleneck areas in cafeterias, near checkout registers, and apples and oranges were displayed in well-lit, attractive baskets
• they were more likely to buy plain milk when chocolate milk was hidden behind plain milk
• they were less likely to buy desserts when treats were cash-only
• they were more likely to select a salad if asked, “Do you want a salad with that?” on school pizza day

(For more strategies, check out this lunchroom redesign graphic from the NYTimes.)

The “Distance to McDonald’s” map, created by Stephen Von Worley, says plenty without saying anything. It’s a great example of how we can use statistics to create compelling visual representations.

It’s something journalists and news outlets have to think about everyday. How do we extract the numbers from a story — whether they concern the economy, the USDA or fast-food outlets — to create a memorable image that will attract readers and make statistics easier to understand?

Data visualizations can be an especially powerful means to parse statistics concerning the economy, globalization, consumerism and other nebulous topics. For bloggers and smaller media outlets, online tools such as AggData, Gapminder World, and Google’s Motion Chart widget and beta-stage Public Data Explorer are indispensable ways to “unveil the beauty of the statistics,” as Gapminder founder Hans Rosling puts it.

AggData helped Von Worley create the map above, giving him the geolocation data of the 13,000-plus McDonald’s restaurants in the continental U.S. The number doesn’t sound like much until you see it represented on a map.

(And as long as we’re talking about statistics, here’s an impressive one: 3.5 billion. That’s about how many pounds of potatoes McDonald’s buys annually from U.S. potato farmers.)

This bittersweet chocolate pear cream tart, donated by the Dayton Street Grille, was the first pie to vanish

Below is an article I wrote for Isthmus on Pie Palooza 2010. I also collected and published 10 pie recipes from local chefs. (My favorite is the tart pictured above — get the recipe here.)

Pie Palooza 2010 celebrates local food… oh, and pie!

At the Goodman Community Center last Sunday morning, Miriam Grunes is monitoring a corps of volunteers, clad in aprons and white toques. Positioned nearby are baking carts, shelves laden with pies, quiches, stratas and tarts.

The sixth annual Pie Palooza is about to begin.

The event, a benefit for the REAP Food Group, is a pastry lover’s paradise, bringing together over 20 different pies made with fresh, local ingredients by Madison-area chefs.

“It’s an opportunity to work with local farms and encourage restaurants to use local products,” says Grunes, REAP’s executive director. “And it’s pie, so it’s about a cultural and culinary celebration of food, too.”

Pie, indeed. In 2009, REAP celebrated its most successful Palooza yet, raising $7,000 and serving over 900 pieces of pie to 450 people.

“We’re hoping for even more people this year,” Grunes says.

Lucky for her, flaky crust isn’t a hard sell. Five minutes after the doors open, the line snakes out of the room. Each ticket holder is guaranteed a green salad, a choice of beverage and two pieces of pie (sweet, savory or one of each). But not all 23 pies are available at once — that would lead to “decision paralysis,” Grunes says. Instead, eight pies are on hand at any given time.

“It can get hectic,” David Flesch, a two-time Pie Palooza volunteer, says. “Kids want the sweet pies. Moms want them to have savory. People have a hard time deciding, and that can slow down the line.”

He gives me a pointed look. It’s decision time and I’m holding up the queue, wavering between Liliana’s spicy crawfish cheesecake and a bacon, potato and Cheddar quiche from Beans ‘n Cream Coffeehouse. Finally I opt for a piece of feta and fennel pie in a yeasted double crust, donated by the School Woods Supper Club, and a wedge of bittersweet chocolate pear tart from the Dayton Street Grille.

Feta and fennel quiche in a yeasted crust

Oh, that tart. Fanned across the top are slices of pear, slightly caramelized, flecked with vanilla bean and perfectly cooked, tender but not mushy. Chunks of Swiss chocolate thread the creamy filling. A Dixie cup of vanilla ice cream from Sassy Cow Creamery sweetens the deal.

Back at the pie table, slices of a rich quiche from Sunprint Café, studded with root vegetables, spinach and sage, disappear fast. A cakey raspberry almond tart from Honey Bee Bakery also vanishes quickly.

This dimply almond-raspberry tart, from Honey Bee Bakery, went fast

Calvin Brace, of Madison, snags a piece of raspberry almond tart, but arrives too early to score a piece of pecan pie, his favorite. Rather than hopping back in line (additional slices are available for $5 each), Brace purchases three whole pies, including a chocolate pecan pie from Monty’s Blue Plate Diner and a sweet potato pecan pie from Hubbard Avenue Diner.

Monty's chocolate pecan pie

“I’m in charge of pie at Thanksgiving this year, so I’m set,” he says. “Pie Palooza solved all my problems.”

He leaves happy, as does Miriam Grunes. Nearly 475 people attend Pie Palooza this year, a slight bump from 2009, and REAP earns $7,000 from the event.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that when it’s Grunes’s turn at the pie table, she nabs a piece of apple crisp cheesecake from Grace Cheesecakes.

“I try to resist getting my heart set on a specific pie,” she says. “But I do love cheesecake.”

REAP director Miriam Grunes with a sweet potato pecan pie from Hubbard Avenue Diner

Porchlight is a Madison-based organization that provides food, employment services, counseling and low-cost housing to the homeless. Porchlight Products, launched in 2007, teaches food preparation skills to disabled and formerly homeless and incarcerated adults.

The Porchlight kitchen staff uses local, seasonal ingredients to make jams, jellies, sauces and pickled products, which are sold at the Willy Street Co-op, Metcalfe Sentry and the Regent Market Co-op. Porchlight products are also on the menu at the Daisy Café and Cupcakery and the Coopers Tavern.

I interviewed Jennifer Hall, Porchlight’s kitchen program manager, about the job training program.

What do people in the Porchlight kitchen training program learn about food production?

Jennifer Hall: They learn basic cooking skills—how to chop, how to dice, how to measure—along with basic math skills. They learn about basic hygiene, canning and food safety, pH levels, how to test food with a pH meter. They’ve learned a little bit about packaging, labeling and selling.

Seventy percent of ingredients in Porchlight products come from local farmers and producers. Why the emphasis on local ingredients?

That’s been the focus from the very beginning… It’s important for our local economy, having it go directly into the hands of local farmers. It strengthens our community, getting to know who your local farmers are. These are generally people who really care about what they’re doing. They can recommend which tomatoes are good for certain products. I think many farmers don’t get the respect they deserve. Good, healthy food is important.

What local farms and producers do you work with?

Keewaydin Organics, Carandale Farms, Butter Mountain Potatoes, Sassy Cow Creamery and Appleberry Farm.

How have sales of Porchlight Products been?

Sales have been steadily increasing. We did over $25,000 in sales in 2009. Right now it’s mostly funding the Porchlight Products program itself, but as we grow, we hope to reinvest in other programs. Right now [the profit margin] cuts pretty even.

Why has it been challenging to become profitable?

Part of it is the population we’re working with. They have a much slower learning curve on some of these activities than other people. We run into problems that other businesses don’t run into… the number-one disability is some kind of mental illness: depression, PTSD, anxiety disorder, schizophrenic effect disorder. We also have people who have physical disabilities—anything from nerve damage resulting from being physically assaulted to bad joints… Most of them haven’t graduated from high school, so when it comes time for dealing with simple tasks, like measuring three-quarters of a cup without a measuring cup that says “three-quarters” on it, it can be challenging.

We don’t have lots of fancy equipment, so things are really being done by hand, which takes longer. [Since we’re] committed to purchasing so many of our ingredients from local farms, the base cost of our ingredients is higher. We can’t get the same kind of profit margin if we were making cheaper products.

Is nutrition education past of the kitchen training program?

Nutrition education is a huge thing… we were making potato salad, and we accidentally got a batch of Mountain Rose potatoes. So we had a moment where we could teach people that potatoes are also red or blue, not just brown.

…One of the farmers we work with brings ramps and morel mushrooms into the kitchen. [Employees] may not have the opportunity to experience or eat that elsewhere. No one had ever seen quince before. Their experiences get broadened by being able to see these different things that grow. And then they get braver about trying things, they get better at eating a better diet. They eat more vegetables. There is an alternative to getting a nasty can of green beans.

So learning how to cook affects their eating habits.

I do notice that my staff now talks about what they’re cooking at home—they start to get curious about different ways to prepare food, they ask questions about how to lose weight… They ask for suggestions and help about what they should be eating… Having the confidence to say, okay, maybe I’ve never cooked an eggplant before, but I can figure it out and give it a try. It changes your attitude.

How many people find permanent work after going through Porchlight’s job training programs?

It’s been like about, two. Most of the people who we have in our programs, they’re pretty comfortable and they’re staying here. A large part we’re kind of missing is finding a way to bridge the gap so that people in the community would be willing to hire these people. We’re working on ways to make that connection… but the unfortunate reality is that many people think they should get paid for hiring a disabled person.

What are you doing to try to make those connections?

I’ve given presentations with the United Way about what I’m doing and the benefit of it. I’m working on putting together an outlined curriculum, a quantifiable thing so we can really show people what we’re doing. I’m talking to people I know in the restaurant industry. I’m still trying to find that right magic person to give me some help. We either have to increase our sales so we can hire more people, or help people move on. It limits the number of people we’re able to train in the program.

Why is it important to give people training in food production?

It’s important because it’s a basic life skill. Even if they don’t get a job at a restaurant, they can cook for themselves… Food is something that really resonates with everyone. It’s a common bond. No matter your race, your disability, food is important to everyone…Giving someone the skills to produce food for other people—that can be a powerful thing.

…And by participating in our program, they’re learning they have value and skills, and it’s much more likely they’ll continue to move in positive directions, rather than falling back into the same habits that caused them to become homeless in the first place.

At Schuster’s, agritourism is an art. Don Schuster and his wife, Theresa, started with hayrides in 1993, then added a corn maze, a haunted forest, a pick-your-own pumpkin patch, a petting zoo and a cannon that shoots pumpkins half a mile. Oh, and there’s a kitchen (in a barn) that cranks out apple cider donuts, brownies, cookies and caramel apples by the hundred. (Don Schuster told me they go through 1200 caramel apples each weekend, easy.)

Don wouldn’t disclose how much he makes from his 220-acre pastoral theme park–”the competition is cut-throat,” he told me–but Wisconsin’s warm, dry fall has been good for business.  Schuster’s has hosted more than 30,000 visitors since the season began in mid-September. Marketing wisdom holds that the longer a shopper stays in a store, the more he or she is likely to purchase, so the Schusters’ strategy–a corn maze here, a pot-bellied pig there, a “jumping pillow” over here–is a sound one. Don said most visitors spend at least three hours on his farm, and some people spend eight.  You can eat a lot of fudge in eight hours.

This is not the Dane County Farmers’ Market, which draws thousands of produce-lovers to Madison’s Capitol Square each weekend. But on South Park Street, there is plenty of free parking in the Villager Mall. As the afternoon wears on, people trickle into the tiny market, chatting with vendors and filling tote bags with locally grown tomatoes, corn, onions and apples.

“This isn’t about tourism,” says Robert Pierce, 59, an organic farmer who manages this market and four others on Madison’s Southside. “This is about helping farmers and helping the community.”

In a city where it seems like nearly everyone grows heirloom tomatoes, reads Michael Pollan and raises backyard chickens, it can be easy to forget that the locavore movement leaves some people behind. Ten years ago, there were no farmers’ markets in this part of Madison, which is home to the city’s poorest and most racially diverse neighborhoods. Now there are five markets here, thanks largely to Pierce, who shuttles between his farm in McFarland and the markets he manages on South Park Street, Rimrock Road and Gilbert Road.

“There’s an assumption that only the rich can afford fresh, organic food,” Pierce said. “We need to bring affordable, nutritious food to this part of town.”

Pierce joined the market on South Park Street as a vendor in 2001, its inaugural year, and became manager in 2003. The market was founded, Pierce said, out of a concern that low-income families on Madison’s Southside were not using their federally funded food vouchers at farmers’ markets.

When it came time to choose a location for a market, then, the answer was obvious: the strip of grass bordering the Villager Mall, which sits just across the parking lot from a Women, Infants and Children (W.I.C.) program office. W.I.C. is a federal initiative that provides food vouchers to low-income mothers and children.

“A lot of people come out of the W.I.C. office and head right to the farmers’ market,” Pierce said. “We’re lucky that way.”

He estimates that 50 to 75 percent of his customers pay for produce with W.I.C. vouchers.

Research suggests that low-income consumers who shop at farmers’ markets are more likely to consume fruits and vegetables. A 2008 study conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles tracked the eating habits of 602 local women. Some women received $10 vouchers to farmers’ markets, while others received $10 vouchers to supermarkets. After six months, women who shopped at the farmers’ markets were consuming about three additional servings of fruits and vegetables a day, versus the supermarket group, who were eating 1.5 additional servings daily.

The study did not collect data about why the farmers’ market shoppers ate more fruit and vegetables. The researchers did note, however, that the farmers’ market shoppers said they enjoyed interacting with farmers and the “pleasant community experience” of the market.

On a recent Thursday afternoon at the market on South Park Street, shoppers crowded around Pierce’s red tent, admiring his neatly arrayed tomatoes, corn, watermelons and pears. Pierce greeted shoppers by name and fielded their questions: What should I do with my tomato plants this fall? Is it okay to freeze turnip greens? Do you have any good okra recipes?

As Pierce doled out advice, he weighed and bagged produce, encouraging children to pick out a free pear.

That weekend, he would take a break from the market to lead a farming workshop for high school students and help build a hoophouse at a school on the Southside.

“He cares about people and his produce,” said Aly Miller, 21, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Miller interned with Pierce last fall and helped him create publicity for the South Madison Farmers’ Markets. In June she received a grant to develop a program that provides farmers’ market produce to the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County and Quaker Housing Inc., an apartment complex for low-income elderly individuals.

Miller said that the idea for her project was inspired, in part, by working with Pierce.

“He’s passionate about helping people,” she said. “And he’s completely committed to bringing fresh, healthy food to this neighborhood.”

Keep the change: Gerald Ford plays agritourist at a Philadelphia farmers' market, 1976

A couple of weeks ago, Ben Schott, lexicographer-at-large for the New York Times, blogged about a word that’s getting a lot of buzz these days: “agri-tainment.” Schott’s definition is simple: agri-tainment is “the combination of farming with visitor attractions.”

Portmanteaus like agri-tainment tend to induce eye-rolling. (Witness infomercial, advertorial, Brangelina.) But agri-tainment and agritourism are simply novel words for old pursuits. Since the early nineteenth century, wealthy Americans have vacationed in the countryside and built farms to experiment with agriculture and entertain their friends. Less-affluent urbanites have long visited farms, too, using relatives’ homesteads for cheap summer getaways. And in the early twentieth century, before the rise of chain motels and Interstate culture, road-trippers routinely camped on farms.

Nowadays, agritourism is booming. Each year over 60 million Americans visit farms, from the proletarian Klackeberry Farm in Georgia (which provides free photo ops with the Chick Fil-A cow) to the patrician Trevin Farms in Vermont (where visitors pay up to $500 to milk goats and make cheese). Agri-tainment includes apple and pumpkin picking; corn mazes; microbrewery and winery tours. The WWOOF program, which matches volunteers with organic farms across the world, is agritourism in its most structured sense. So are events such as Bike the Barns, an annual fundraiser that helps low-income families purchase organic food. And that pig butchering class I took last spring? Agri-tainment, absolutely.

Farmers’ markets are perhaps the oldest and most popular form of agritourism. (Boston founded the nation’s first in 1634.) Such markets are ubiquitous now—there are over 6,000 in the U.S.—but they dwindled in first half of the twentieth century, when suburbs, supermarkets and convenience stores sprang up. Farmers’ markets reemerged in the 1970s, thanks in part to growing concerns about pesticides, food production and getting “back to the land”. By one estimate, the number of farmers’ markets in the U.S. increased by 500 percent between 1970 and 1986. They continue to flourish; the number of markets in this country grew 16 percent between 2009 and 2010.

Most people love farmers’ markets. So why does “agritourism” sound like a dirty word? For starters, the word “tourism” carries negative connotations. Few of us like to imagine ourselves as tourists—“I’m a traveler, not a tourist” is a common conceit. Tourist traps are for suckers, touristy places should be avoided, and if you travel “tourist class” on a cruise ship, you’re stuck in a lower berth.

There are other reasons the word “agritourism” leaves a bad taste in our mouths, one being that literature, art and advertising teach us to romanticize rural living. Many Dickens novels, for example, cast the farm (or the countryside) in relief against the city, framing the former as pure and the latter as dirty and morally corrupt. Tourism, with its connection to consumerism and pleasure-seeking, seems antithetical to the “purity” of agrarian life.

But thousands of farms, particularly small, family-run operations, depend on agritourism to stay afloat. In the U.S. and Canada, about 2 percent of farms—some 65,000—host agritourism events, according to the farm-stay registry ruralbounty.com. That means that a relatively small number of farmers are pocketing a lot of agritourism revenue. In 2001, for example, farms in the U.S. barely broke even, earning an average of $368 each. Farms that hosted agritourism events, however, made an average of $9,200. The most successful agritourism region is the Northern Crescent, which includes New England, Wisconsin, Michigan and New York. In 2001, farms in this area that hosted recreational events earned, on average, more than $48,000 each from agritourism.

Agri-tainment, then, can be a very good thing, even if the agri isn’t entirely authentic. Take Bates Nut Farm, near San Diego. Bates sells nuts from all over the world, but doesn’t actually grow any. (A flood in the 1970s destroyed the farm’s walnut orchards.) It also hosts a popular pick-your-own pumpkin farm every fall, which draws up to 20,000 visitors on weekends. The company grows some pumpkins on site, but buys the rest from a grower in northern California.

Does any of this matter to the typical agritourist?

“It’s not about that,” Sue, a Bates employee, told me. “People remember coming here as children. This is a destination. It’s about the experience, not where the pumpkins come from.”

Sebranek drinks vodka, but she grew up pouring brandy in the supper clubs of Rice Lake, a town nestled in Wisconsin’s Red Cedar Valley, four hours’ drive northwest of Madison. Supper club patrons are creatures of habit, Sebranek says. They sit at the same table, they eat the same meal, and they order the same cocktail, usually a brandy Old-Fashioned or Manhattan. “And God forbid you make it with anything but Korbel,” she says.

Korbel—named after the Czech revolutionary Francis Korbel, who sold cigars and lumber before making his fortune in champagne—is the top brandy maker in the country. And Wisconsin is Korbel’s bread and butter: in 2008, the state accounted for more than one third of Korbel’s brandy sales.

No one quite understands this. This is no evidence or explanation, historical or agricultural, for Wisconsin’s passion for brandy. The Midwest is not grape country—most brandy consumed in the U.S. is distilled from California grapes—and Francis Korbel did not stop here en route to northern California, where he first began making wine.

Korbel is made from grapes, but you can make brandy from anything that ferments: other fruits, such as apples, pears and blackberries, or honey, rice, wheat, corn or potatoes. Bourbon, distilled from corn, is a form of brandy; so is Scotch whiskey, made from beer.

Wisconsin has long been the top-cranberry producing state in the nation, and growers expect a bumper harvest this fall, thanks to the warm, wet summer. Cranberry brandy, then, would be the natural result, but an Internet search yields only one commercially available cranberry brandy, made by Nemiroff in Ukraine. Their cranberries are “hand-picked on the faraway marshes in Siberia.”

Back at the Greenbush, Anne Sebranek has her first customer this evening: Emile, a Danish engineering student, who enters quietly and sets his backpack on the floor. He has never been to the bar, but he’s heard good things about the pizza; he might come back later with a friend for dinner. For now he orders a Spotted Cow. He is 24 and wears a black Adidas track jacket. There is a faint mustache above his lip.

I ask Emile about brandy, a word derived from the Dutch “brandewijn,” meaning “burnt wine.” He says that people in Denmark drink brandy, yes, but Gammel Dansk and other bitters are more popular. I tell him that Wisconsin supposedly consumes more brandy than any other U.S. state. He sips his beer.

“Hmm,” he says. “I’ve been in Madison a month, and no one’s offered me any brandy yet.”