Take a drink of Death’s Door. The company makes gin and vodka, shown, plus white whiskey. Photo courtesy Capital Brewing.

It’s got to be Death’s Door.

Made in Wisconsin by Capital Brewery, Death’s Door takes its name from a strait between the Door County peninsula and Washington Island—both located between Lake Michigan and Green Bay in eastern Wisconsin—where the spirits are made.

Death’s Door can be a perilous body of water. The name dates way back to pre-Colonial times, when a war party of 300 Winnebago natives tried to cross to Washington Island in canoes on a stormy night. They all perished, giving birth to a legend that the waters were infested by an evil spirit. When French traders arrived, they called it Port de Morts (the French translation) to ward off other traders.

But back to the real spirits: Death’s Door products are distilled from organic hard red winter wheat grown on Washington Island.

See the company website for a store locator.

TRIVIA
“Winnebago” means “the people from the stinking water,” which may have referred to the stagnant waters of Green Bay or the aromatic, algae-filled waters in local lakes and rivers. The French shortened the name and referred to these Native Americans as “the Stinkards.”

Why didn’t the Winnebago change their name? According to Wikipedia, the Algonquian words do not have the negative overtones attached to the French and English translations, puant and stinky.