Saturdays in autumn mean Badger football, even if you’re an ex-Wisconsinite some 900 miles east. Each week, a flock of New York City residents rise early, don their UW apparel and head to the Mad River Bar & Grille, a Manhattan sports bar at 82nd Street and Third Avenue. Standard in big cities, such bars declare allegiances and morph into hometown hangouts for games. At Mad River, the Badgers are king.
The Upper East Side establishment sports a somewhat less-than-authentic Wisconsin motif (taxidermy, dark wood, skis and a Bucky Badger magnet stuck to the side of an old-fashioned cash register) but redeemed itself with one illicit import: Spotted Cow.
It was nostalgia in a bottle, a Madison campus favorite that seemed a requirement for watching the game. The rich brown bottlenecks with signature green-and-white labels sold for $8 a pop, normal by New York standards but double the price at a Wisconsin bar. “There was a huge demand for it,” says Rob, a Mad River bartender for five years. At its busiest, the bar could move 10 cases.
But the profitable practice died. Mad River was busted in November 2009 after three years of selling Spotted Cow. The microbrew isn’t licensed for sale outside of Wisconsin. “People are really disappointed,” says Rob, who declined to give his last name, perhaps for fear of being nabbed by NYC’s beer police. But devoted drinkers received urgent calls and parting gifts that night. “The police didn’t make us pour it out,” Rob says. “It would have taken us all night.” So the whole batch landed on the curb. Fifty cases on a dirty New York City street corner, free for the taking.
Spotted Cow is a classic microbrew, a wheat ale with a cult-like following made by the small-town New Glarus Brewing Co. First created in 1995, the recipe for Spotted Cow has never changed. “It’s an easy-drinking, unfiltered ale leaning toward the sweet side of the spectrum,” brewmaster Dan Carey says.
It’s also a Milwaukee favorite, served here at more than 300 restaurants and bars. Sales spread to northern Illinois in the late ’90s and early 2000s, until New Glarus decided the massive Chicago market had stretched the brewery too thin. “It’s not a marketing stunt,” Carey says of the scale back. “We want to control the growth of our brewery.” Despite new digs built two years ago, the brewery employs just 50 people. “It’s big enough,” Carey says.
But the wider world had meanwhile discovered the craft beer. Bon Appetit, Chicago Magazineand Draft Magazine all bestowed honors, and Spotted Cow took on a certain mystique. It became a favorite item for ex-Wisconsinites to sneak out of the state.
Stories of such smuggling abound.
Trips home for Mequon native turned New Yorker Demetrios Saites culminate in Cows delivered to his Brooklyn fridge and friends. The first attempt in 2007 ended with a destroyed cardboard box and broken bottles at baggage claim. “I’ll never forget the image of that box doing the walk of shame down the runway,” he says. Now, he pays luggage fees, employs fragile stickers and secures each bottle upright between cheese, sausage and T-shirts. His record is seven six-packs. “I’m definitely known as a smuggler,” Saites says. “My friends expect me to bring back Spotted Cow.”
Airline restrictions killed Debbie Schreiber’s routine of carrying a six-pack onto flights, so she drives it from Madison to Nashville twice a year. Her parents plan to drive kegs there for her October wedding. “It tastes great,” she says, “and reminds me of Madison.”
The brew even hits the big leagues. Former Badger hockey stalwart and Chicago Blackhawk-turned-Dallas Star Adam Burish showed off his refrigerator on Chicago TV before winning the Stanley Cup. Inside was Spotted Cow.
No one’s saying how Mad River secured its ready supply for so long. But patrons miss it badly. “There’s been a gaping hole since,” Saites says. Brewmaster Carey sympathizes: “People who are homesick want to watch a Badger game, eat a brat, have a pitcher of Spotted Cow.”
Exactly. It conjures old times at the UW Terrace, tailgates and trips to the state’s many watering holes, transporting you to younger, dumber, more carefree days. “It’s like a badge that you’re from Wisconsin,” Carey says. The taste of an entire state in each wheaty swig.
