John I.
Yelp
I've never been a huge brandy fan. I wondered if it was some prejudice about Wisconsin, but upon analysis of my whey matter, that's not the case. But that changed with the first sip of a Rhine Hall Old Fashioned. Not the manliest-sounding drink, with its apple brandy core and maple syrup, tempered by classic Angostura bitters. They said, it's "alcohol forward." I still haven't figured out even what "fashion-forward" means; so I would describe it as being closer to the whiskey that Nick, the Pottersville bartender in "It's a Wonderful Life" served "for men who want to get drunk fast" than Clarence the angel's Flaming Rum Punch request. Served up with TLC by Chelsea, the belle of the bar, the brandy Alexandra, the hostess with the "prost"est ("cheers!" in German).
My four friends and I hadn't gone to Rhine Hall to get drunk fast; rather we were there to learn some physics: the science of taking the crispy bites of crate-fulls of Michigan apples and turning them into sips of palate-awakening schnapps. Wow, what a change from the cheap, peppermint schnapps in high school. (My friends, not I, of course.) We learned a lot about science, about artistry, and even a little about family (It's an ex-hockey-player father/daughter family business, after all). Jenny certainly learned a little about "icing" from dad. (This fair-weather Blackhawks fan just re-learned that term the night before.)
Our tour guide, Ari, is not only the not-so-mad scientist (he might have been before his psychology degree?) who manages the operation, from driving the harvest from Michigan, "c'mon backing" the truck into the loading dock, to cutting, mashing, fermenting and--be still, my foolish heart--bottling the sharp-tasting nectar at the end with the help of the mom of the family and her friends. He was our tour guide, and despite being interrupted with our barrage of questions and bad jokes (okay, mine), he was an A-one, fun tour guide--the Neil deGrasse Tyson of astroapplephysics. We wanted to buy the teacher a liquid apple for his excellence, but he had work to attend to. Jenny was also in the bar to answer lingering questions.
We ended our tour with complimentary shots of apple brandy, and then purchased a flight of shots of their current products to pass around the table and sip. I'll confess that I'm still not a huge fan of the brandy straight up, but the tour was well worth the 10 bucks. I will probably be back to I belly up to the bar of the belle for another Old Fashioned, a perfect description of the craftsmanship that "still" delivers.