A Whole Lot of Picnic Beer

I've mentioned before that I don't collect bottles. Here's another one from my non-collection:

The scale is hard to judge, but believe me, that was a half-gallon of beer. In brown glass to keep the light out.

It was brewed and bottled in Fountain City, Wisconsin, one of the river towns north of La Crosse. I think we picked it up in an antique shop there, or maybe another town nearby, about 30 years ago.

I've always loved the label:

The four words of the name were done in lettering, while the rest of the words were set in metal type. The serif is Cheltenham and the sans serif is Kabel, both early 20th-century favorites.

Don't miss the union bug printed just below the word Wisconsin near the bottom right. It's not completely readable even with magnification, but I can at least see that it's from Winona, Minnesota, which is just across the Mississippi and a bit south from Fountain City.

Aside from the label, there are two other reasons this bottle appealed to me and that contributed to its finding its way to my house. I thought the idea of hauling a half-gallon bottle of beer — in glass — to a picnic was culturally particular and noteworthy. By the time we acquired the bottle, that was not a thing anyone would think of doing, even in beer-drinking Wisconsin. And the tiny little bottle opening, relative to the capacious bottle volume, seemed incongruous. It originally had a normal-size bottle cap, I imagine, but compared to the rest of the bottle that opening seems miniature. 

It looks as though someone has tried to resurrect the Fountain Brewing Company, and even this brand. But they don't put it out in half gallon bottles.