On the straight-edged corner of Becher and 1st Street lies the Twisted Path Distillery. The front doors open into a tasting room with scattered tables, a polished bar, and racks upon racks of flavored spirits.<\/p>\n
Beyond the tasting room, owner Brian Sammons is in his distilling element. A huge still dominates the converted warehouse, across from the storage tank and the hot water heater that Sammons\u2019 father designed for his operation. Just beyond in another room, there\u2019s a second still, this one extra tall for making vodka. Sammons\u2019 bottling operation is in here too, and the wall is lined with bottles bearing the Twisted Path label.<\/p>\n
Twisted Path has been in business seven years. Sammons has been building a reputation, and the business is becoming known for its custom cocktails.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not bad gig for a former spy.<\/p>\n
Sammons grew up in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, and was not at all interested in school. He spent summers with his friends trailing after the band The Grateful Dead. When it came time for college, Sammons chose 51ÁÔÆæ because it was close and inexpensive.<\/p>\n
He started out as an engineering major, but soon discovered it wasn\u2019t the right \u2013 ahem \u2013 path for him. Sammons started taking general education courses to fill his time and meet his graduation requirements while he figured out what he did want to do. Those gen eds were his spark.<\/p>\n
\u201cAround that age, my brain started waking up,\u201d he joked. Sammons found he loved economics, especially classes with Professor James Peoples. He fondly recalls arguing with Dr. Sami Hawi during philosophy classes, and he remains in awe of his political science classes with Professor Shale Horowitz.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was intense. I loved it. It was a super interesting subject and super interesting perspectives coming at a firehose pace,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n
Somewhere along the line, Sammons said, he got interested in counterterrorism. After graduating from 51ÁÔÆæ in 1999 with majors in political science and economics, Sammons applied for and got a job with what is now the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. His job was to pore over satellite imagery to look for patterns in terrorists\u2019 movements. He was searching for one in particular: Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a handful of us playing \u2018Where\u2019s Waldo\u2019 in Afghanistan,\u2019\u201d Sammons said. \u201cWe found him, more than once.\u201d But, he added, though they knew bin Laden\u2019s location, they didn\u2019t have the weaponry available to act on that information.<\/p>\n
And then came Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n
Sammons recalled being horrified, but not surprised, when the towers were hit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been waiting for. Because we knew something was coming. We just didn\u2019t know what,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He and his colleagues were immediately pulled into a meeting with Charlie Allen, the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Collection at the time. Allen told them all to get ready: \u201cWe\u2019re going to war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sammons and his colleagues began working around the clock for the next few months, stopping only to shower, eat, and sleep before returning to work hunting for bin Laden. Soon after, Sammons is sure that he found the mastermind behind the 9\/11 attacks hiding in Afghanistan \u2013 but the personnel and equipment immediately available would not be enough to take bin Laden out. Sammons begged his superiors to delay their attack, but he was overruled. The attack went forward. Bin Laden survived and escaped as Sammons feared he would. The U.S. would not find him again until 2011.<\/p>\n
Later, Sammons transitioned his role in the CIA and began training to be a case officer for the clandestine service \u2013 \u201cwhat normal people would call a spy,\u201d he joked. He was assigned to counterintelligence where he worked to keep foreign governments from discovering U.S. intelligence operations.<\/p>\n
Sammons knew he wanted to raise a family, and a CIA career was not the most conducive to his goal. He entered law school at UW-Madison, peeled back his agency cover, met his now-wife, and left the CIA altogether. Sammons took a job as an assistant district attorney in Milwaukee County as they began their family, and later took a position at the law firm von Briesen and Roper.<\/p>\n
A corporate lawyer, Sammons is not.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that point, we\u2019re at, I hate my job and I\u2019m working a lot,\u201d he said. He and his wife wanted to be their own bosses and make their own hours. If they were going to be working as hard as they were, Sammons, reasoned, it should be at jobs that they liked.<\/p>\n
He credits his wife, Laura Singleton, for being the driving force behind quitting and starting their business venture. \u201cMy wife is the one with all the guts,\u201d he said proudly.<\/p>\n
Sammons had been home distilling as a hobby (\u201cWhich is a felony, but it\u2019s outside the statute of limitations so I don\u2019t mind admitting it\u201d), so Singleton suggested founding a distillery. Twisted Path Distillery opened its doors in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of Twisted Path is to do our own thing and don\u2019t think about what other people might do,\u201d Sammons said.<\/p>\n
That guiding principle has led Sammons to rethink standard distilling procedures. When he couldn\u2019t find an electric still that could make American whiskey correctly, he invented one and patented it. He and his bartenders spent four years perfecting a Bloody Mary vodka so that they didn\u2019t have to bother with the standard Bloody Mary mix.<\/p>\n
Sammons also has a \u201cflavor library\u201d \u2013 an enormous rack of flavored liquors and spirits that he and his bartenders can experiment with to come up with new cocktails. You\u2019ll find tastes like garlic, allspice, schisandra berries and bupleurum root.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like figuring things out and coming up with new things. There is infinite opportunity to do that,\u201d he said. Some of those experiments have been interesting to say the least \u2013 sugar snap pea cocktail, anyone? \u2013 and some of have been great successes. Sammons has a chai vodka that he makes by diluting pure vodka with his wife\u2019s chai tea recipe.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s very much a part of the business, Sammons said. \u201cShe\u2019s very smart. Day to day, I\u2019m in the weeds. She can take the 10,000-foot view.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also credits 51ÁÔÆæ for some of his success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was easy to get a well-rounded education there. It\u2019s about learning how to learn and learning how to think,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to do just one thing my whole life. I want to keep doing what\u2019s interesting \u2013 following the twisted path. Going forward, I\u2019m well-equipped to figure out what I need to figure out.\u201d<\/p>\n
No matter how many twists that path takes.<\/p>\n