Wisconsin Foodie

cc >> In this episode of Wisconsin Foodie, we travel to Burlington, Wisconsin, to visit Brightonwoods Orchard and get a tour from owner and ex-president of the Apple Growers Association, Bill Stone. Brightonwoods Orchard has over 200 varieties of apples, specializing in rare and antique apples that are no longer mainstream, but definitely popular with local chefs and foodies in the know. Brightonwoods Orchard is also home to AEppelTreow Winery, AEppelTreow is responsible for some of the best ciders, brandies and whiskeys in the state, using mainly fruit from Brightonwoods Orchard. Nick and Ira of Bittercube meet up with the owners of AEppelTreow Winery, Charles and Melissa McGonegal, to get some insight into their process, and finally, make a cocktail using AEppelTreow spirits. All of that and more on this episode of Wisconsin Foodie. Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following major underwriters for their support. Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, representing the dairy farm families of Wisconsin, who fostered a proud history, with generations of family-owned dairy farms, working to sustain the state's economy through job growth and providing acclaimed cheeses and other dairy products. For more information on Wisconsin dairy,

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eatwisconsincheese.com >> Hi, my name is Bill Stone. I'm one of three owners of Brightonwoods Orchard, located in western Kenosha County, in southeastern Wisconsin. So, conveniently located for the Chicago, Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha travelers. >> Bill, we're standing here on the edge of hundreds of acres of yours. How did you get into this apple racket? >> I married it.

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>> The story of every man's life. >> Yeah, we made a few mistakes. It wasn't a mistake though. >> Are you still married? >> Yes. >> Okay, see? It worked out. >> 42 years. >> Right. >> Or is it 44? >> Don't look at me. >> It's actually 44. But my father-in-law, who bought the farm in 1950, he planted 25 varieties he remembered as a kid. >> Just as a hobby. >> Yeah. When I married into the family in '68, I used to collect stamps and coins. But now I collect trees. It's pretty easy to find people if you need the trees. These trees will only get as tall as that bamboo, maybe six inches more. >> So these are all babies. How old are they? >> These were planted, from this, the right hand row, they were planted last spring. Of 2011. >> So you're not just a regular orchard operation. You guys are doing boutique restaurant stuff. >> We do. >> Where can I go? >> Well, there's a cafe in Brookfield that we go to. David Swanson of Braise, and then Peter Sandroni. >> La Merenda. >> Yeah, La Merenda. Then Jack Kessler. >> Oh, Jack, yeah. >> He's really into local food and interesting. >> So, you grow some real delicacies, basically, and then they find their way to some restaurant dishes, as opposed to just the apple crust. >> Right, correct. True. I'll show you, this is the latest planting, and I'll show you the next planting. >> Even on a still day, standing in this little micro orchard, when I breathe in deeply, it's one of the most satisfying scents. >> Our gig is variety of apples. We raise over 200 varieties of apples. But we do other things, and Fall themed kind of things, like pumpkins, and gourds, and squash, and mums, and jellies, and jams, and honey, and you know, the usual Fall kinds of things people come out for. Well, we raise a lot of heirloom apples that we've collected over the years. Of the 200 varieties we raise, I would say probably at least a third to a half of them would be considered heirloom apples. To be an heirloom apple, the variety has to have been around for at least a hundred years. Some of them, the oldest ones we have, have been around for over 500 years. So, 300-500 years is a test of time, I guess you'd say. >> This looks like a full, gorgeous orchard. I'm gonna try and get this guy down. >> Oh, yeah. >> Let's see what I can do. I don't know if I can get that branch, but-- No, no! >> Here, right here. Here. You want that one. >> I want that one. >> You want that one. >> I lost it here in the tree. There it is. Oh! It just popped right off. Like it was waiting for me to show up. Well, for full effect, I'm going to-- Look at that. Look at that gorgeous shine. I'm going to honor it by having a bite right here in the tree. >> It's sweet. >> That's one of the best pleasures in life. Basically, until you fall in love for the first time, and you really get to kiss somebody you love, you've got apples.

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>> I never thought of it quite that way. >> It's true. >> You notice we're going down hill. From here west, is pretty much where the frost really took effect. So we have some apples out as far as row 30, but after that, it was-- We're in row 25 right now. So, if you get out past row 30, it's really bleak. Wisconsin's actually a pretty good place to raise apples. They like temperate climates. They like cool nights, warm days, not severely hot days. They like a reasonable supply of water, a half-inch to an inch a week. That did not happen this year. So we have had a lot of trouble this year. We had a very warm March and then a very cold April, which probably killed half the blooms. Then we had a drought, which causes the tree, as a defense, to drop more fruit and to drop some leaves. So overall, we think we've had about a 25% or 30% drop, compared to a normal year. But the cool nights tend to bring out the color more in the apple. Honey Crisp grown on the west coast as opposed to in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, to me, look different. They have more vibrant red and yellow colors than the west coast apples do. I think it's the cold nights that help. >> Let me meet your pickers, if we could. >> This is Bob and Vicki. >> Hi, guys, how are ya? >> Good. >> Good to see ya. >> Bob and Vicki have been picking out here for almost 30 years. They're from Maine, so they have that brawniness in their blood. >> Right, yeah, ten below? Come on! Yeah, why are you wearing a hat? >> Yeah, I don't need a coat!

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>> We've been picking out here when it was snowing. >> Oh, yeah. In some Novembers, we're still picking. >> Mm-hmm. >> We'll pick 6,000-7,000 bushels here next year, if it's a decent year. >> Whew! >> We've picked 1700. >> Wow! >> Pretty significant. >> Yeah. >> We've got to head down to the end of this row, because I want to get you a Spitzenburg. >> Okay. >> This is one of Thomas Jefferson's favorite apples. Here's the Spitzenburg. Thomas Jefferson raised these in Monticello. He imported them from Europe. It was one of his favorite apples. A good apple.

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A hard apple. >> Mm-hmm. Really super sweet and kind of backs off. Then again, a couple more flavors come out, almost a woody sort of thing. Wow. What is this called? >> Spitzenburg. >> Spitzenburg! >> Esposus Spitzenburg. >> Oh yeah, he was a pretty famous downhill skier.

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>> Must've been before my day. So you don't get full--

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You get the juice out of them. >> Wow. >> You don't have to show that! >> I, uh, no! That's fabulous, because we've done segments with people that do wine and beer. There's been a lot of spitting on this show. But that, my friend, might've been the most magical and fireworks-esque that we've ever had!

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I'm not even going to try it, because I'm just going to dribble down the front of my shirt.

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So, why do you think Jefferson loved these? This is a very American apple, in a way. >> They make good cider. >> Oh. >> They have enough notes. >> Yeah. >> They make a good cider. >> And being a wine connoisseur, which he was. >> Mm-hmm. >> But this is a good eating apple. >> Oh, yeah. I'd say that our customers used to be older, and they would remember a tree, a Snow apple, or a Lady apple, or whatever, from their youth. I think over the last ten years, we've seen a lot more younger people taking an interest in some of these historic apples. In the mid-'90s, Charles and Melissa McGonegal found us on the Internet. He was looking to make ciders in his basement, which he'd been doing, but he was looking for some particularly unique varieties, that he found on our website we grew. So he came out the next week, and from then on, it was almost every week he would come out to pick up some apples and grind them up in his little grinder at home, press them, and make basement cider, as we called it. >> Bill, where are we? >> Well, this is AEppelTreow Winery. >> But this is part of the orchard property. >> It is. >> The barn that you're pressing in is 200 yards away. The trees that you're growing from are right out there. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> We made a couple business decisions in 2001. One was, that we had planted more fruit than we could sell here, so we decided to talk to Charles, who we'd been doing business with for his basement cider. >> Right. >> Charles and Melissa were very interested in developing an avocation, so they said sure, they would improve the barn. They did all the improvement in here. We jackhammered out the front for the flooring. They had a ten-year lease. Now they've got another ten-year lease. >> So it's working out. >> Yeah. >> My spirit aficionado friends, and my cocktail geek friends, and I say that affectionately, because Charles is a distillery geek. >> Right. >> Tell me that they're product is preeminent. It's exceptional. >> Charles will tell you that.

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>> This place is thick with humility.

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>> I agree with him. My favorite product, just in case you were interested, are his really dry apple champagne, his brut champagne. It's just marvelous. I like his hard ciders, particularly the spiced cider. >> That sounds great. >> And the cran-apple, which is cranberry apple. What I do like are the end products, which are his brandy and whiskey. >> Right here. >> You know the difference between brandy and whiskey? >> Uh, we drink more of one in Wisconsin? >> Yes. >> Than any other state in the nation. >> Minnesota, I think we're very close to beating. But the Brown Dog is made from sorghum. Sorghum is a relative of corn. Any products made from grain must be called whiskey, when you have a spirit. >> That I knew. >> Then, brandy is a fruit. So you know, any of the fruits would be brandy. >> So these are great names. Immature Wisconsin Brandy. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> To be a true brandy, it needs to be aged two years. >> I think this is probably my favorite label, though. Brown Dog. >> It's also my favorite one to drink. >> Thank you. This is a true honor. >> It's nice of you to come out. >> I'm glad you stuck around in this state. I'm glad you married the right girl. All right, cheers. >> Yes, off you go! >> Hey everybody, I'm Nick Kosevich, and this is Ira Koplowitz. We're from Bittercube. Today, we're in Burlington, Wisconsin, at the AEppelTreow Cidery, Winery, and Distillery. >> They do a lot of things here. We're really excited to check out some of their brandies. They also make great ciders and wine. We're here to see Charles McGonegal and his wife Melissa, chat about their products, see the process, and make some cocktails with their spirits. >> Let's head in. >> All right, let's do it. Charles, hello. >> You caught us on a good day for Brown Dog. >> Nice. What do we got going on here? >> Well, we have almost the whole process of making our sorghum whiskey going today. >> What do we have here? >> This is the yeast and some nutrients. >> Okay. >> It is still a slow fermentation, as distilleries go. We let it take ten days to two weeks. >> So, this is where the magic starts to happen. >> This is when the magic starts to happen. This drum right here is several days in. You can see it's actively fermenting. >> Look at that rolling. Look at it. It's just rolling. There's nothing causing that unnaturally. That's just happening inside of the tank. >> That's the way the yeast work. Yeast eat sugar. They divide the sugar molecule into alcohol and CO2. The alcohol, we'll get out in the next step. That's the CO2 leaving on its own. This has already been done for two weeks. Here you can smell a much more, I think, beer-like note. It's 13% alcohol. >> Oh wow. >> We have a very small still, so for efficiency, we run the alcohol at this step up a little higher. >> So you call this whiskey. Most people traditionally think of malted barley, rye, wheat, and corn whiskey. Why would this be called whiskey? >> Because this is grain. >> Right. >> Grain makes whiskey. Fruit makes brandy. >> You know, we've been doing this a long time. There's a lot spirits that we love, a lot of whiskeys that we love. You don't come across a sorghum whiskey that often. How many people are making this type of thing? >> In this country? Three, including me, that I know of. >> Wow. >> And two of those are in Wisconsin. >> Two of them are in Wisconsin. >> Excellent. >> All right, let's move along the process. Melissa, we have Ira and Nick with us. >> How do you do? >> This is Melissa. She's my wife, our graphic artist and our distiller. This is the Colonel. The Colonel is a small moonshine still, 20-gallon capacity that was made for us by Colonel Wilson, hence the name, who lives in Arkansas and makes stills and does Civil War reenactments. >> So walk us through the process here. We were just at the barrels, and we're looking at that barrel that was about two weeks' fermented. What happens next? >> This morning, Melissa loaded up the still to right about here. It's a really simple process. You boil it. Due to the physics involved, alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water does. So when the whole thing is boiling, we have 13% here, in the space above it, we're about 30%, 75% here alcohol. >> Okay. >> We have stripped many of the coarse flavors out, and they end up back in the pot. >> Okay. Oh, it's nice. It's sweet. >> It's just about at the end of hearts, so you should be starting to pick up just a bit of a bitter kind of grapple-like note to it. >> Yeah. >> A heavy grapple-like note to it. That's where I cut from the hearts that we're going to keep to the tails that we'll conserve and pour into the next batch, but we won't keep it for final product. It'll just be added to the next batch, so we get more hearts out of the next batch. >> All right, so we saw the fermentation process happen. We've seen the distillation. We've collected a bunch of hearts now. >> Now that we have the hearts, where do we go from here to actually make the Brown Dog? >> Well, in order to be whiskey, there's one really important step that all whiskey gets, and that is oak barrels. >> All right. >> This way. Steel is for cider, because we do hard cider. Whiskey and brandy get oak. This is actually Wisconsin forest oak. It's carved into staves, the boards, in Minnesota. It then goes to a large barrel maker in California. >> Then it comes back to you. >> Then they custom make it into a barrel for me. >> What's happening on the inside of the barrel, when you get it back here to the distillery, what has happened on the inside before you put spirit in it? >> This is a charred barrel, which means that it has been toasted over an open flame, usually an oak fire, to toast and char the inside surface. That makes a series of flavors, from the inner edge of the wood to the outer edge, you have charcoal, you have smokey, spicy, you know, peppery spicy flavors going to toast, which is where you get vanilla flavors. Chemical reactions go on in the wood as it's toasted. So dark toast is going to be more coffee-like. You go to medium toast, which is vanilla. And finally, up to very lightly toasted, and all the way up to raw wood, where you'll get some of the oaky notes, and you get nut and coconut, and bread toast-like notes. >> What type of char do you have on these barrels? >> It's about a number one, so lightly charred. >> How long is the Brown Dog going to age before you're going to bottle it and serve it? >> One to two months. >> One to two months. >> Wow. >> Very young. Again, it's one of the reasons we call it Brown Dog. If the slang for moonshine or new whiskey is "white dog," well, it's not white anymore. You saw what white looks like. It's clear. It's a beautiful white straw or amber color, so Brown Dog. >> We love the Brown Dog, just two months in the barrel. In fact, we love to make cocktails with it, as well, so I think maybe we should head to the tasting room and make a couple cocktails up with it. >> Let's get to work. >> All right. >> I'm thirsty. >> All right, let's do some tasting. >> What have you got? >> Excellent, let's get some glasses. So this is the Brown Dog 80. It's been in the barrel. It actually got a finishing short aging with apple, cherry and chestnut wood chips. Now we're ready to try it. >> All right. >> It's more floral than I might've expected, from what we tasted on the still. >> Yeah. >> It is so interesting that it was only on wood for a couple months, and there's so much flavor there, almost brandy-like flavor, fruit, lush flavor that is really fantastic. >> It starts in the field, then we add the yeast, then we have the skill of the distiller and Melissa's taste buds. Finally, all the woods, and that's what we aim for. From the field to the glass. >> It's very easy to drink, that's for sure. >> Absolutely. >> Any thoughts on a cocktail idea, Nick? >> I think something that would be very interesting would be if we actually took the sorghum syrup that we used today to ferment and then distill, and then age, it ends up in the glass. Maybe we take that syrup just to soften the spirit a little bit, and then you can pick out one of our bitters and we can add that to it, and see how that goes. >> I think that sounds like a great idea. >> All right, so we should probably start with two ounces of the Brown Dog. We're just going to stir this cocktail. We're not going to shake it. We're just going to focus on the flavors of the spirit and just chill it without aerating it. Okay, now we've got a little of the sorghum syrup here. We're going to add just a little bit. It's very thick and viscous. >> Yeah. >> That is probably good, okay. All right, Ira, you want to grab me a bar spoon, and we'll try to stir this up a little bit? >> Sure. >> Charles, do you have an idea about a type of bitters that might be nice in this cocktail? >> I certainly know my favorite thing to put with whiskey. That is the cherry. >> All right, let's do it. >> So, we'll do two eyedroppers of the Cherry Bark in the glass. >> There we go. >> Let's get some ice in there and we'll be good. >> All right. >> We're going to have a little bit of water content, since we had that viscous syrup, kind of making it a little bit thinner in the glass, softening the spirit a little bit, as well as adding, you know, a chill to the drink. >> The moment of truth awaits. >> I think a little whisper of orange oil would go a long way in this. >> An interesting thing about the Brown Dog is the color. When you look up to the light, it's actually almost a yellow, so adding some more of the sorghum syrup actually creates almost like a greenish yellow, like really amber haze to the cocktail. >> Excellent, gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> So the flavors, the Cherry Bark and the vanilla are playing really well with the Brown Dog. I think the sorghum syrup that we added has brought these like cinnamon... >> Raisin. >> Raisin notes. >> It's fantastic. >> It's a really great Fall cocktail. >> Absolutely. And all Wisconsin. >> All Wisconsin. >> Wisconsin Foodie is made possible by underwriting support from the following companies. The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board; Travel Wisconsin; Outpost Natural Foods Co-op; Wollersheim Winery; Alterra Coffee Roasters; and Something Special from Wisconsin. This episode of Wisconsin Foodie is now available on DVD through WisconsinFoodie.com. You can also like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and watch other content through YouTube and Vimeo. Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following major underwriters for their support. Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, representing the dairy farm families of Wisconsin, who fostered a proud history, with generations of family-owned dairy farms, working to sustain the state's economy through job growth and providing acclaimed cheeses and other dairy products. For more information on Wisconsin dairy, eatwisconsincheese.com