“Cocktails in Bloom” is a cocktail book that uses collected ingredients

Before Bentley Gillman became an award-winning distiller, he was a kid in the woods. Now he’s the distillery manager at award-winning Tattersall Distilling in River Falls. Gillman grew up between La Pointe on Madeline Island and Wausau, where he spent much of his time exploring the surrounding fields and forests, gathering wild fruits, grains, mushrooms and medicinal herbs.

This month, Gillman brings his passions together with the release of Cocktails in Bloom: A cocktail book with finds from Tattersall“Over the years, I’ve tried and tested so many experiments with wild foods and flavors,” says Gillman. “Cocktails in bloom is a selection of favorites that are easy to implement and contain common and easily identifiable botanicals.”

While foraging ingredients is now common practice in restaurant kitchens, it’s still a rarity in bars. But Gillman believes that using foraged ingredients in our cocktails not only opens up new flavor possibilities, but also creates a valuable connection with nature. “This book is really an invitation to try new flavors, experience the world and build a relationship with nature,” he says.

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To this end, Cocktails in bloom offers inspiration and practical information for anyone looking to add a wild flavor to their cocktails. The book details 14 ingredients found across the state – not just in rural areas, but also in urban settings, like dandelion and burdock root. And in keeping with Tattersall’s commitment to sustainability – the distillery is 100% solar-powered, according to Gillman – most of the ingredients covered in the book are invasive or non-native plants. “There are tons of invasive species that are perfectly edible and really interesting to the palate,” says Gillman, “and when you remove them from the environment, it’s actually a net gain for the ecosystem.”

After giving hints on where to find the individual plants and how to identify them, Cocktails in bloom shares recipes for making syrup, wine and more than three dozen cocktails, both traditional and non-alcoholic. These range from Pine Island Iced Tea, which includes birch cola syrup and pineapple herb syrup, to a non-alcoholic Black Locust Lemonade, which uses the sweet pea and vanilla notes of black locust to complement the tartness of the summer favorite.

For anyone new to foraging, Gillman recommends starting with ground ivy (also known as creeping Charlie), an invasive plant that’s easy to find in Milwaukee and has a lovely honey-sage scent. “It’s so simple, you can’t go wrong,” he says. “Everyone knows what creeping Charlie is because everyone has heard someone complain about it. Or maybe they were the one complaining about it!”

Cocktails in Bloom: A cocktail book with finds from Tattersall ($25) is currently available for pre-order on Tattersall Distilling’s website and is expected to be available on Amazon and other retailers later this month.