Talk smack to Wisconsin, and I’ll smack that talk right back. Call it a boring state; I’ll call you boring. Say its winter is unbearable; I’ll glare and say, “then you’ve never curled.” Insult our cows, and my heart will ooze pure regional rage. My responses are reflexes: headlong and not necessarily the most reasonable. But my behavior is also natural – I’m only reflecting what scholars have already documented.[1] I wouldn’t want their theories to go to waste …

So when outsiders started casually using the phrase, “Wisconsin’s drinking culture,” it grated on me. I had a hazy grasp of our statewide love of beer, but how could I prove that it was deeper or more widespread than other states? Maybe we’re just more vocal about it. Maybe it’s more about pride for historic breweries. Maybe we harbor a lot of demographic-data-skewing college students. In any case, were state boundaries really that culturally definitive?

Nope, I wasn’t ready to confirm the existence of a distinct “drinking culture,” even when presented with first-hand accounts of Wisconsin “culture shock.” A customer at a café told me that, upon moving here from Washington, he found quart bottles of beer emblazoned with the words, FAMILY SIZE. Now a seasoned resident of the state, he laughed and shook his head resignedly as if to say, “That’s Wisconsin for you.”

Temporarily rattled, I dismissed it as an outdated story or an exaggeration. I was also not looking up any statistics.

At least until last Monday. I typed three words into the Google search box – “drinking culture in” and froze. The auto complete function suggested the following places, in this order: America, China, Wisconsin, Australia, Japan, Korea, Ireland, England, Europe, Russia.

Apparently, we are the cultural equivalent of a sovereign nation when it comes to drinking. We also require separate analysis from the nation we inhabit.

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[1] “Midwesterners… have constructed much of their identity in reaction to ridicule from the outside. Defensiveness … has been a long standing trait.” – The American Midwest: Essays on Regional History

      The next piece of evidence I found was a map, wherein Wisconsin was shaded black and labeled with a “1.” Next came North Dakota, and, thirdly, the other state I called home: Iowa. These numbers were the result of research done for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in 2007 to determine the percentage of adults engaging in binge drinking in the past month. Wisconsin took “first place” at 23.4 percent. Minnesota was a distant 34th.

To help expose the root of these customs, the Milwaukee journalists enlisted sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, historians, residents, and frequent visitors. Apparently they couldn’t come up with anything better than: blah blah it’s cold here, and we’re still overwhelmingly German blah. And we all just wanna be so gosh dang normal and alike and accepted. (These are the very stereotypes that made me prickle to begin with.)

But I dug further than those damning headlines. When considering the entire pool of drinkers, our consumption per drinker is actually lower than about half the states. Compared to other states, we have more people drinking moderately, as opposed to fewer people overdrinking. My extended family could perhaps serve as a micro-microcosm of the state. When we get together in Green Bay for holidays, various bottles of wine and my uncle’s home-brewed beer – “Doug’s Suds” – are among the attendees. (And sometimes the same dusty, unlabeled liquor bottle makes an appearance, too, but everyone steers clear of that.) But while nobody over 21 abstains, none of us overdo it. 

Though it seems strange, I trusted statistics before I could trust any of the qualitative experiences from my 20-plus years of residence in this state. But the question “does a fish know it’s wet?” applies here (ignoring that “wet” has an alcoholic connotation). Cultural immersion will blind anyone to its quirks. I’ve been exposed to quite a bit of “drinking culture” since I was young, but I didn’t have much to compare it to. Not actively seeking it, I haven’t been especially attentive to the bar scene (or lack thereof) in my travels. But for newcomers, it’s readily observable. It’s beer at a church bazaar.

So what are the implications of this knowledge? If I drink a Spotted Cow with dinner, is it the choice of a thirsty individual, or an impulse that traced its way through German roots?

I suppose I only know what I’m not going to do from now on: deny the truth that Wisconsin has a “drinking culture.” (Whether or not this can be conflated with a “drinking problem” is a different story altogether.) I’m also not going to stop having a beer from time to time. And I’m not going to feel weird about it. Maybe.