Uff-da? In Wisconsin, say that and you get a great glass of beer. Anywhere else you get . . . a funny look.

Wisconsin may be full of cheeseheads. It may be a party state. But boy, are they drinking a lot of good beer there.

Its days as the nation's beer capital are over — Schlitz, Pabst and Heileman are gone — though you still can tour Miller in Milwaukee and sample 10 American-style pilseners with different names.

But grapes do grow in Wisconsin, primarily on the high ridges of the Wisconsin River, near its confluence with the Mississippi. There, vines bask in sunlight and frosts sink into valleys. What vintners can’t grow they truck in from other states, adding a Wisconsin je ne sais quoi  to the grapes during blending, fermentation and aging.

The first came to harvest the lumber and stayed to drink the beer, or so claims the brewery: "It takes a special beer to attract 2,500 men to a town with no women,'' says Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing, founded in 1867 and now the oldest business in town.

Purple is what you'll be if you get into a wooden tub of grapes and try to turn them into juice with your bare feet. Vineyards don't get their juice that way anymore, but many still offer a grape stomp, and there's nothing goofier to do on an autumn day.