A little bit of work shows that for the latest year listed, 2000, Wisconsin has dropped to 12th on the list in terms of absolute consumption (California is the unsurpising champ here) and 5th in most bottles of liquor/cheesehead (New Hampshire wins this race and Washington comes last).
As someone who grew up in Wisconsin, I’m greatly saddened to hear of this decline (somewhat seriously). There was something kind of cool about growing up in a state that always seemed to resemble a point in history 20 years prior to the present, filled with middle age German farmers and mechanics out for a “barley pop” or a “brandy ole’ fashioned”.
I worked as a waiter in a Wisconsin restaurant that actually catered to a more upscale clientele that often came from out of state (a touristy area, which drew foreigners), but still got its share of the locals. This led to the requirement that when someone ordered a Manhattan, you had to ask “Brandy or whiskey?” The locals all gave you the “are you stupid” and said “Brandy, of course.” The out of staters all gave you the “are you stupid” look and said, “What do you mean, brandy? It’s a Manahattan.”
Are these figures really for consumption or are they sales figures? I was under the impression that much of the booze purchased in New Hampshire, for example, was destined for consumers in Massachusetts and other nearby states that had higher liquor taxes and/or blue laws that prohibited Sunday sales.
A quick googling came up with this quote in a newspaper article from 2002:
I’m from Wisconsin and have never heard of a “barley pop”. What is it?
Oh, and how can one be thrilled about Wisconsin holding on to views from 20-30 years ago? Leaving that repressed and often bigoted state is the best decision I’ve ever made.
Cecil is writing a weekly column, with a fixed number of words. Sometimes, he is able to waste a few words citing his data sources. Often he doesn’t want to squander valuable space describing a bibliography.
He’s actually got a little better about this in recent years than he was in the long ago. I think that in the long ago (Before Internet), he figured that people should just trust him, and we all did. Now, AI (anno interneti), when so many sources are available to so many people so easily, he feels more obligation to let folks know whence he culled info.
Beer. You know, pop = soda, and the barley part becomes obvious.
I suppose it depends on your world view. Part of me is still disgusted by it, and I found it incredibly limiting when I was young. Therefore, I also left both the state and small town and head for the city.
As I get older, dimmer, and more nostalgic, I realize that not everything about it was bad. There’s a stability and pragmatism that comes from such a view set that can be of benefit. When I return home now, it seems simpler and comforting.
I think that your first sentence may have something to do with it, but I’m not sure your second sentence is correct.
So far as I remember, “schnapps” in German is a completely distinctive drink (in color, taste, smell, etc.) from “brandy.” I also believe that German has different words for brandy and schnapps (a cheap and potentially inaccurate german-english translation program comes up with “weinbrand” for brandy, and “schnapps” for schnapps).
Happily, Cassell’s is here at my desk, helping me fight through Lieser-Krakau’s Die Meisterin. (A freaking nightmare, BTW. I can’t even come up with an effective translation of the title. ) It says ‘brandy’ can be translated as ‘Kognak’, ‘Weinbrand’, or ‘Branntwein’. The only one of those with a back-translation is ‘Branntwein’, which seems to be more generally ‘spirits’. But ‘Schnaps’ also seems to be more general-Cassell’s lists ‘spirits, brandy, gin, liquor’ as possible English translations.
Worthwhile research anyway, as I found the colloquiallism ‘Schnapsidee’, which can be roughly translated as ‘the kind of idea you might have after drinking a whole lot of liquor’. Now there’s a useful term for real life!
Sadly, the literalistic interpretation gets buried by the connotative interpretation. ‘The Mistress’ does not mean to an English speaker what ‘Die Meisterin’ means to a German speaker … Fortunately, I’m not trying to produce a good English translation of the book, I’m just trying to read it.
A puzzlement here. This bit was reposted on 2010 Oct. 15 as a “classic”. The date on the original was 1976 May 21, but it includes data from 1988. It appears that Cecil has invented a time machine but just not gotten around to telling us about it yet. Also, in that future where he lives, dispensing the accumulated knowledge of centuries to us mere mortals in his past, the great State of Wisconsin has evidently fallen prey to the Twitter attention span and had its name shortened to merely Wiscons, thus the designation of its citizens as Wisconsites.
Altho I myself am a teetotaller, I take a certain amount of civic pride in my home state’s tradition of massive overconsumption of fermented malt beverage (among many other forms of bibulousness) and humbly call Cecil’s attention to this engaging graphic:
Columns which are updated with new information will have dates up the update placed within the text. However, this is a new thing which we are doing and it’s difficult to go back several years and do this (similar to how sources/citations have been added for the last couple of years now - it will be quite difficult as well to go back to columns from the 70’s-90’s and update those).
When I was a kid, Sports Illustrated did a profile of my hometown area, and that’s the first place I ever read a version of this factoid. Truthfully, I remembered it giving a number closer to the 75% from the original question…
) It says ‘brandy’ can be translated as ‘Kognak’, ‘Weinbrand’, or ‘Branntwein’. The only one of those with a back-translation is ‘Branntwein’, which seems to be more generally ‘spirits’. But ‘Schnaps’ also seems to be more general-Cassell’s lists ‘spirits, brandy, gin, liquor’ as possible English translations.
