Wisconsin State Cocktail: Brandy Old Fashioned

Not officially. The Wisconsin Assembly passed a bipartisan resolution in November 2023 that would have declared the Brandy Old Fashioned the state cocktail, but the full joint resolution — SJR84 — failed to adopt by April 15, 2024. The session ended without the measure completing the legislative process, and no statute was created.

That means the Brandy Old Fashioned sits in an unusual position: it was close enough to official recognition that the resolution language exists in the legislative record, and far enough away that it has no place in the Wisconsin state symbols list alongside the bird, the flower, or the state beverage. It is culturally embedded and legislatively unfinished.

The push to name the Brandy Old Fashioned the state cocktail had genuine legislative momentum. The resolution drew bipartisan support in the Assembly and passed that chamber in November 2023, with its text framing the drink as 'an unmistakable symbol of Wisconsin, its residents, and its unique culture.'

The Senate did not advance it before the session closed. The resolution lapsed, and no statute was created. The failure was procedural, not a rejection of the drink. The measure ran out of time, not support.

The Wisconsin Brandy Old Fashioned starts where a standard old fashioned ends. A classic old fashioned is whiskey — traditionally rye or bourbon — muddled with sugar and bitters, served over a large ice cube, maybe with an orange twist. Clean, spirit-forward, deliberately simple.

Wisconsin's version replaces the whiskey with brandy. Not just any brandy — typically a domestic, slightly sweet brandy in the Korbel style, which was heavily marketed in Wisconsin through most of the twentieth century and became the default base through sheer market saturation. The result is a rounder, softer drink than the whiskey version.

From there, Wisconsin adds muddled cherries and orange — not as a garnish but muddled into the glass — plus bitters and sugar. The finish is where the drink really diverges: most Wisconsin orders specify sweet (lemon-lime soda), sour (sour mix or Squirt), or press (half soda water, half lemon-lime). Club soda alone is the less common option. The cocktail lands sweeter and more fruit-forward than any whiskey old fashioned, and ordering it 'sweet' in a Wisconsin supper club is a completely unremarkable act.

After Prohibition, brandy — particularly the affordable domestic style — took hold in Wisconsin's supper club culture in a way it never did in most other states. Supper clubs are not a generic concept here: they are a specific Wisconsin institution, typically outside city centers, built around a full dinner menu, a cocktail lounge, a relish tray, and an unhurried pace that resists easy categorization as either a bar or a restaurant.

The Brandy Old Fashioned became the supper club drink because brandy was available, the sweet-sour finish worked against fish fry and prime rib, and decades of Korbel marketing locked in brand loyalty that still operates as a default in many Wisconsin bars. Order an old fashioned without specifying brandy and the bartender will likely assume it anyway.

The drink is genuinely unknown in this form outside Wisconsin — that is not a marketing claim. It is why the resolution drew bipartisan support, and why most sites still describe the Brandy Old Fashioned as Wisconsin's official state cocktail as if the vote had passed.

Wisconsin's codified state beverage is milk — designated by statute in 1987 and still the only drink with a legal address in the Wisconsin Statutes. The Brandy Old Fashioned resolution, even if it had completed the legislative process, would have been a joint resolution, not a statute of the same standing. Milk holds the official spot. The old fashioned holds the tradition and a failed resolution that came closer than most symbols ever do.