COPPER CROW DISTILLERY

A Distillery With A Strong Sense Of Place

Written by Gabe Toth /// Photos

Tapping into the Wisconsin dairy industry, using local fruit and regional grain, nestled among the Lake Superior pines on a Native American reservation: Copper Crow is a distillery with a strong sense of place.

Curtis and Linda Basina founded the distillery in 2018 to give visitors to the area a taste of that place, and along the way became the first distillery to be located on a reservation.

The couple frequently enjoyed stopping at local breweries, wineries, and distilleries whenever they went on vacation, and after winding down previous careers — in the state highway patrol and education, followed by a stint running a family-owned gas station — they decided to take the leap into distilling.

“We were talking one day, and I said, ‘You know, we’re here in northern Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior with the Apostle Islands National Park right at our doorstep,” he said. “We’re a very heavily touristed community. We’ve got local wineries. We’ve got local breweries, but nobody is doing any distillation. I think there’s an opportunity here.”

Starting a distillery where they did, though, was a tenuous proposal.The facility is located near Bayfield, Wisconsin, within the reservation of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, located on the northernmost shores of Wisconsin, making it subject to a variety of federal alcohol-related prohibitions over the years. Dating back to the 23rd United States Congress and Andrew Jackson’s presidency, a federal law enacted in 1834 regulated trade and conduct on reservation land banning the exchange or manufacture of “ardent spirits” (a prohibition that, Basina observed, was repeatedly violated time and again, particularly by the U.S. cavalry).

The law remained in place until the 1950s, when a portion of it was lifted to allow for the possession and consumption of alcohol on tribal lands, resulting in the occasional reservation bar or supper club, but the proscription on distillation itself remained in place until 2018.

“When we made our application to the TTB, I had a really solid suspicion that we were going to be the first Native-owned distillery in the U.S.,” Basina, a Red Cliff member, said. It helped that their reservation is one of a group known as “checkerboard” reservations meaning at one time, part of the reservation was divided up by the federal government under the Indian Allotment Act into private parcels that individual reservation members owned.

“The government decided, hey, you’ve got this reservation that encompasses this many acres. Here’s your membership. We’re going to give every one of your tribal members, say for example, a 40-acre parcel,” he explained. “Individual tribal members were given a parcel of property, and Native Americans, historically, had no concept of ownership of property, so once the property came into private tribal members hands, some of them saw an economic opportunity and sold their property either to other members or to nonmembers. Some didn’t understand the taxation responsibilities associated with property ownership, so the property then became tax delinquent and was subsequently surrendered to the local jurisdiction, and purchased by nonmembers or, in some cases, logging companies.”

As a result, the reservation, like many in Wisconsin, contains a lot of squares that are privately owned by both tribal and non-tribal members. “A lot of the real desirable pieces on the shores of Lake Superior were bought by non-tribal members who erected vacation homes and things like that,” he said. Basina said the tribe has been working to buy some of that property back.

The Basinas were able to secure parcels for their own home as well as a separate plot for the distillery. Because the distillery is technically on private land that’s no longer held by the tribe, they were able to circumvent the then-standing prohibition on distilling. Of course, as Basina noted and many distillers have experienced, that depended “on how our TTB application was received and how it was reviewed.” (The ban has since been overturned due to the lobbying efforts of Washington State’s Chehalis Tribe and others, a campaign the Basinas followed closely.)

While Copper Crow’s location on a reservation carries meaning for the Basinas, including the company name, they prefer not to push that part of the narrative. “We have gotten so much local, regional, state, and national attention for who we are and what we’ve done, and yet there’s still lots and lots of people who come to experience our facility, and they have absolutely no idea that we’re native,” he said. “There are local people from our community that have no idea that there’s a distillery in their backyard and have no idea that my wife and I own it and are registered members of the tribe.” They’d rather be known for quality products, and are tapping into local resources to meet that goal.

Like many small distilleries, they started with vodka and gin. However, alongside their wheat-based house vodka, Copper Crow has a unique vodka and gin crafted from whey. The idea came about while Basina was learning how to distill. He attended a course that distillery consultant Rusty Figgins put on several years back. Basina said Figgins pulled him aside almost immediately and told him, “Hey, Curt, you’re from Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is the dairy state. You really need to look at doing something with dairy, primarily whey, because it’s generally considered a waste product. If you can make that work, you can take a waste product and turn it into a value-added product, so I accepted Rusty’s challenge.”

It was indeed a challenge, because whey — the liquid byproduct of the cheesemaking process — contains a small amount of milk sugar (lactose) that can be converted to fermentable sugar, but not enough to conduct an efficient fermentation or distillation. However, Basina found a dairy a couple of hours away that’s producing a concentrated version called whey permeate. Other distillers have struggled with the low lactose content in whey, but the dairy they work with filters out the protein, concentrating the whey, and then re-pasteurize it so it’s fairly stable and doesn’t encourage lactic-acid fermentation.

They figured out how to ferment and distill the whey on their own, but the Basinas’ younger daughter, Rebecca, went to school locally at the University of Wisconsin –Stout and was eventually hired to manage a lab at the university. The family distillery came up in a casual conversation with the dean one day, and led to a partnership focused on optimizing the process.

“The next thing you know, that relationship blossomed and one of the professors down there said, ‘I want to work with you to help you find more efficient means of fermentation, which ultimately should help you get more volume out of the product you’re using,’” he said. They began working closely with the university in 2020, through COVID-19, and continue to maintain a collaborative partnership with the faculty there. “For a couple of years, we did a lot of closely monitored tests with the university. They came up with some means to assist us in fermentation.”

Copper Crow also produces a rum and a brandy in partnership with local apple orchards in the fall. “We’re able to secure quite a quantity of fresh-pressed apple cider that we turn into a locally-produced apple brandy,”

“We’re able to secure quite a quantity of fresh-pressed apple cider that we turn into a locally-produced apple brandy.”

Basina said. The Basinas knew when they started the business that they wanted to release some aged whiskies, and were recently able to release four-year-old bourbon, rye, and wheat whiskies from regionally sourced grain. They’re also storing a limited number of American single malt barrels. “Hopefully those hang around in barrels a little more than four years,” he said.

They’re currently working to expand the product line for the whey supply after receiving a state grant for manufacturers to develop and market new dairy based products y. The state funding allows them to buy additional equipment and work towards further developing and marketing new products such as aquavit, amaretto, and a Campari-style amaro, all using whey.

In terms of their facility, the distilling equipment consists of a 1,000-liter mash cooker, some stainless steel bulk dairy tanks for fermentation, a 1,000-liter hybrid still, and a 50-gallon still. The building is about 3,500 square feet with a quarter of it dedicated to the tasting room, another quarter as warehousing and shipping/receiving, and the remaining half taken up by the distillery. The distillery and tasting room is set back just off of the local highway, State Highway 13, with a 500-foot driveway and a parking lot that comfortably holds 12 to 15 cars. Often during the summer, he said, the lot will be full and both sides of the road lined with cars out to the highway.

“It’s a small facility, but we make it work,” Basina said. “We crank it out, and we’ve developed an incredible reputation. Most of our advertising comes from word of mouth.”

Some aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to actually boost business at the distillery, he added. Copper Crow had very strict protocols, and he said their customers seemed to appreciate that. Many of those visitors were coming from populated areas such as Chicago, Madison, and Minneapolis, eager to get away.

“They came to these small areas and they were not afraid to open their wallets,” Basina said. “People wanted to get out of the city and out of the congestion, and to be able to breathe, essentially, and they came north, just to be able to get out and be somewhat free.”

Despite the success, they’re not interested in growth at the cost of the forest that surrounds the distillery. They would have to destroy or alter the pines to expand the facility, and have plenty on their plates already.

“When we started, I was in the distillery 80, 90 hours a week sometimes. After a while that has a tendency to take a toll,” Basina said, noting that he and Linda are already in their early 60s. “We’ve gotten to the point now where we’re quite comfortable, we’ve got a number of employees that handle a lot of things for us. At some point in time, I’d like to retire, although I’ve retired twice already. The next time I retire it’s going to be for good.”