Rum has a long association with seafaring and the Caribbean.
While it might be a surprise to find a premium rum being distilled in Northeast Wisconsin, it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that the origins of Smooth Sailing Rum were aboard a sailboat.
Curt Naegeli and his family spent two and a half years sailing on the West Coast and in the Caribbean when he was 37.
“We’d pull into a lot of ports … and everybody would share stuff,” Naegeli says. “I wanted to develop a way that I could make my own alcohol on board. Something that didn’t need mix, didn’t need ice, you could just drink it right out of the bottle. Something that we could share.”
While taking a break to repair their sailboat, Naegeli showed his brother-in-law a book with instructions about building a still. A cheesemaker by trade, his brother-in-law built a small still using a metal milk can. And with that, Naegeli began distilling rum on board his boat.
He says the still was crude and not well built, but it allowed him to hone his skills.
“I found that people wanted something that was sippable, drinkable,” says Naegeli, who has spent the last 14 years refining Smooth Sailing Rum through a carefully controlled process at North Woods Distillery in Coleman. He uses sugar cane alcohol from Brazil, sugar, bottles from France and reverse osmosis to purify the water. Packaging and labels are from Wisconsin.
Smooth Sailing Rum is flavored and sometimes features ingredients, such as mint, that Naegeli can grow himself. There are currently toffee, cinnamon and coffee flavors available. Smooth Sailing is under 40 proof and typically sweet, according to Naegeli.
It takes about a month to produce a batch of 1,500 bottles, and Naegeli makes about five batches a year. He bottles it, labels it and packages it himself before a distributor picks it up for delivery to retail outlets that include Woodman’s, Festival Foods, Total Wine, Piggly Wiggly and others in Wisconsin.
