- Michael Gebert
- Rhine Hall Distillery
As a category of drink, schnapps has an old-fashioned, slightly cheesy image tied up with winter sports. Peppermint schnapps is the kind of candy-flavored drink that someone young and unsophisticated would drink in the belief that more sophisticated people drink it apres-ski. Dean Martin would pour two of them in hopes of seducing Elke Sommer in a Matt Helm movie or something.
The proof of that is a device that’s proudly displayed but no longer in use in the distillery: a contraption in which bicycle power is used to crush apples and extract the juice. With a few obvious exceptions (like the mangoes in their recently released mango brandy), Jenny says, “we get all our produce from the Great Lakes region, all of our apples are from Michigan right now. Michigan has so much to offer, and Wisconsin and even in Indiana. We get apples year-round, and we make grappa from the leftover pomace [remains of pressed grapes] from winemaking in this region, though most of their grapes are from California. We’re moving into a bunch of exciting things right now, like cherries.”
- Michael Gebert
- The apple-crushing velocipede
