The cocktail recipe calls for boiling apple juice, cider, cinnamon sticks and sugar, then adding a whole bottle of 190-proof Everclear.
Minnesotans who like to make "Apple Pie in a Jar" this time of year have to run for the Wisconsin border to get the highly concentrated alcohol, its sale outlawed in the Gopher state decades ago. But if some Wisconsin lawmakers and advocates have their way, the option of driving to the state next door could dry up.
A bipartisan bill is slated for introduction in the Wisconsin Assembly to ban 190-proof or higher spirits from Dairyland liquor store shelves.
Wisconsin Reps. Andre Jacque, R-DePere, and Terese Berceau, D-Madison, are working to pass the bill after the 2011 death of a 22-year-old man who drowned in a swimming pool after drinking a punch made with the potent alcohol. The Wisconsin State Council on Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse requested legislation a couple of years ago.
"People are totally unaware of how much alcohol they're consuming" when the clear alcohol is mixed with other liquids, said Julia Sherman, coordinator of the Wisconsin Alcohol Policy Project at the University of Wisconsin Law School. "The potential for misuse is higher."
Jacque pointed out that 190-proof alcohol is banned in at least 15 states, including Minnesota, Michigan and Iowa.
"Safeguarding the health and safety of Wisconsinites far outweighs whatever reason there could possibly be for human consumption of intoxicating liquor containing 95 percent or more of alcohol by volume," Jacque wrote in an e-mail. "It is poison and has sadly proven its destructive potential."
At President Bar and Liquor Store in Superior, across the border from Duluth, about a case or two of Everclear goes out the door each month, cashier Crystal Andrews said.