Stevens Point is a river town with the nickname “City of Wonderful Water.” There’s a new distiller in town turning that water into rum, whiskey, gin and vodka.
Brian Cummins hasn’t always been a distiller, but his chemistry background sure helped when he founded Great Northern Distilling.
“I really believe that distilling is just chemical engineering with good taste,” Cummins says. “It’s a lot of the same unit operations that you do in any kind of chemical distillation.”
A handmade craft cocktail starts with great ingredients. At Great Northern, those ingredients are all harvested within 150 miles of the business.
“It’s important to celebrate local growers because they are my neighbors,” Cummins says. “They are my friends. They support us. We want to support them.”
Great Northern’s Polish style potato vodka is made with potatoes grown in central Wisconsin. The grains come from a small farm up near Rhinelander. The distillery’s brandy is made with wine produced by a neighbor, Sunset Point Winery in downtown Stevens Point. And the ginseng whiskey is made with the best ginseng in the world grown around Wausau.
The Wisconsin ingredients are mixed in small batches in a still designed in Germany. Having something made by hand of 100% pure copper, Cummins says, is crucial important to the process. The liquors are all bottled, labeled and packaged by hand.
Cummins says he’s on a mission to elevate “cocktail culture” in central Wisconsin and in the process point patrons to his hometown.
“I have dedicated everything to this, and a small business is not for the faint of heart,” Cummins says. “I’ve put in basically every asset that I have to make this place a success.”
