Forgotten Brewery Caves - Mayville Wisconsin. Part Two.

Mayville has a lot of brewing history.  

The largest surviving brewery building in town is associated with the oldest brewery, that established by Benjamin Mayer on Main Street in 1853.  Mayer ran it for a couple of years, in association with his meat market, then sold it to a certain Martin Bachhuber...who was also a part timer since he was a veterinarian.  One supposes the brewery's delivery horses were very well tended to.  

It went through a variety of ownership changes and enjoyed middlin' success until a man named Ziegler bought it in 1874.  Production was increased, a plot of land across the river was purchased for a five acre beer garden called Ziegler Park, and in 1888 they demolished the old brewery entirely and built a new one.  My limited survey of the site suggests that they reused some of the existing foundations.  

The Ziegler family carried on the enterprise with considerable success after Matt Ziegler died in 1892.  They even purchased several other small breweries in the area.  Ziegler Park was upgraded with a dance hall and a foot bridge to reach it.  Competition from Milwaukee suds was temporarily stopped when a saloon owner who wanted to pour the non-local stuff suddenly found that he was unable to buy any ice to keep it cold.  Guess who owned the only ice house in town?

Prohibition was a challenge, but the Zieglers diversified into soft drinks, near beer and - in a somewhat complicated story - seem to have started making cheese on site.  A couple of unsuccessful years of brewing ale and stout in the mid 1930's were not a success, and the building has been used for cheese production ever since.  

Almost all of us who like Beer also like Cheese.

In 2021 the building is, as you can see, rather unlovely.  But the flags are cheery and what brewery cave enthusiast can avoid a happy moment when spying the words: 

Visit Our Cheese Cave

OPEN

The entrance to the cheese shop is down several steps and in through a doorway once big enough to trundle kegs in and out.  I surmised that the ground level was once lower....that would be a nasty obstacle to beer distribution.  I also assumed that I'd see the beer cave in direct line with said doorway.  And, well you don't get to be the internet's self declared beer cave Authority without knowing a few things...

To the right you can see wine for sale.  Handy if you are off on a silly road trip and want to bring home something of a prize.  The walls and ceiling of the cave have been extensively remodeled as one would expect in a food preparation/sales area.  The archway seen above was probably the perimeter of an antechamber,  but appears to have modern cement buttresses added.  I always give credit to those who take good care of brewery caves and these folks have earned it.

Of course there are many kinds of cheese.  Some made on site, others from elsewhere.  With so many choices I had a hard time picking just a couple.  I did not risk the green stuff.

The cave has three segments.  The Wine area seen above, the main Cheese area that did not photograph well, and another off limits section behind a wooded screen.  Here's a peek back there.

If you find yourself near Mayville Wisconsin I suggest you stop in.  Buy some cheese and some wine.  Have a chat with the nice folks in the shoppe.  They were more interested in the recent (i.e. Post Prohibition) history of the place than in its earlier, sudsy story.  But they did tolerate an eccentric fellow who came in and just wanted to talk about beer caves.  It is a subject I can run on about with some air of of Authority.  So when I suggested that there really should be two more identical caves, one to each side, they did admit that yes, this was indeed so.  

We'll see this repetition of three caves in a row in our next Mayville stop.  And get ready to peruse that posting with a container of age and time-of-day appropriate beverage in hand.  We'll be taking a deep dive....

Addendum:  Here's the view of Ziegler's Brewery on the 1876 map.  Notice that the land just to the north is owned by a member of the extended and somewhat dubious Wolter clan, and that just to the south is Cemetery Street.  Will we go there too?  Yes.  Yes we will.