In a move familiar to any Wisconsinite, Leah Caplan held up her hand, palm in, thumb splayed. “Where’s Washington Island?” she asked. Well, if her hand were Wisconsin, she went on, then her thumb would be Door County. “And this,” she said, poking at the air about an inch off the tip of her thumb, “is Washington Island.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Here’s their story: In 2001 a Madison-based architect and urban planner named Brian Vandewalle bought the 100-year-old Washington Hotel, once a center of island life and a haven for captains sailing the Great Lakes. Caplan, a longtime champion of local, seasonal cooking—she’s one of the founders of Home Grown Wisconsin, a distribution co-op that supplies restaurants like Alinea, North Pond, and Lula with organic Wisconsin produce—came on board shortly thereafter.
The renovated hotel opened in 2003, but from the beginning Vandewalle and Caplan envisioned the business as much more than just an inn. Washington Island has a year-round population of about 650, and in such a small, isolated community it’s hard to make a living farming, since most of any crop would typically have to be shipped to the mainland to be sold. As a result, by the end of the 20th century the island economy was almost exclusively based on summer tourism, and hundreds of acres of arable land lay fallow. Caplan and Vandewalle wanted to jump-start an agricultural renaissance on the island, with the hotel as a primary market for island-grown crops—specifically wheat.
“I wanted vodka as basically another food product created from wheat,” she says. “And I wanted it to taste good and to taste good with food.” For the gin, she wanted something clean and simple. “There’s a range of gin flavors, from pure juniper to violet, lavender, and lime. And I like those, but because I’m a purist I wanted something very pure.”
Other customers weren’t as tough. “Wow, thanks!” said a young, dark-haired woman as Ellison wrapped up his pitch, which included an iPhone slide show of the Koyens in the field. “That’s really interesting!”
