The story of our gose, made with cactus fruit and named after Nino, our pal from the hills of Sicily, goes like this:
Nino, the groundskeeper of a magnificent bed and breakfast on a hilltop in the province of Messina, Sicily, near where Dock Street founder Rosemarie Certo was born, keeps himself amused by befriending guests of the hotel and trading conversation for fruit.
He somehow magically exists around every corner and beneath the shade of every tree, so hardly any time goes by at all before he reappears again with a plate of figs or a pocket full of prickly pears and a long rant about something or other, mumbled through a crooked smile and barely understood by anyone, perhaps not even himself.
When we did manage to get a word in edgewise, we told him about our brewery and restaurant here in Philadelphia and he issued us this challenge:
"If you put my face on a beer, it will be the best selling beer in America!" he told us, without a trace of doubt in his voice.
Alrighty then. We're holding up our end of the bargain, and slapping his lovely visage on specially designed cans of Nino's Prickly Pears. If Nino is right, his face will be in every household (21+, of course) in the country. Talk about the American Dream!
(Label design drawn by Alexis Anne Grant, Dock Street's Saturday manager and artist extraordinaire.)