{image1}Milwaukee is a beer town and that likely will never change. But that doesn't mean a city also built by wine-drinking immigrants can't embrace the fruit of the vineyard, too.
Enter Cornelius Geary, a repatriated Milwaukeean who recently launched a Milwaukee chapter of Wine Brats, a national group that aims to teach people about wine and to remove the snobbery that is often associated with this extremely earthy tipple.
"Milwaukee isn't that kind of town (snobbish)," Geary says.
The non-profit Wine Brats have 30 chapters and boast more than 20,000 members nationwide. According the Geary, in addition to wanting to learn about wine, many join the group to meet new people, check out new galleries, clubs and restaurants and to help raise funds for local charities through wine-centered events.
As the rest of the country has hopped on to the Wine Brats wagon, it's taken someone like Geary to come back and see Milwaukee's potential as a wine-drinking town.
"I've just moved back to Milwaukee from Sydney, Australia where I lived for a year and a half," he says. "Before that I was in San Francisco and Munich, Germany. I'm from Milwaukee but have been away for 10 years. Traveling as much as I did and seeing so many great wine regions in Australia, California and Germany, then seeing the burgeoning wine market here and having attended a lot of Wine Brats events in San Francisco, I thought it would be a good fit for Milwaukee."
So, Geary pitched the idea to the national group and, he says, "they said, 'Let's do it.'"
Up and running for about a month now, Geary has been working hard to make connections and begin the process of setting up events.
"We've seen a lot of support already from the wine community and from the gallery community," he says. "We're plugging ahead and we've got our first event scheduled."
That event, "Saint Valentine's Day Wine Tasting and Sweetheart Gallery Sale," is set for 6-9 p.m. on Fri., Feb. 13 at the West End Gallery, 5000 W. Vliet St., a combination art gallery and high-end wine shop. Admission is free.
The event will feature wines of the romance languages, Geary says, meaning varietals from Italy, France, Spain, Argentina and Chile.
Not all events will be free, according to Geary, but he is aiming to keep event prices down to attract new, especially young, members, who pay no fee whatsoever to join Wine Brats.
"In the future, even when we have paid events, they'll be affordable -- $10-35 generally," he says. "Our focus is really on the younger demographics, 21-38. We'll take those older people who are wine experts but we want to focus on education of younger people about wine."
To become a member, simply fill out a form at www.winebrats.org.
"Membership is going to get you an education on wine," Geary says. "Tasting seminars, educational opportunities a bit more formalized than just showing up for a tasting. You will be able to meet with expert wine people who can share their knowledge.
"We'd like to have a stylish event a week; going out to galleries, museums, wine-oriented shops, restaurants and clubs and presenting wine in a very fun and less pretentious way."
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
