Sept. 9, 2026
By Julia Buskirk, Vernon Reporter
VIROQUA, Wis.––Nine years ago, Dan Johnson was driving home from the Gays Mills market, turning onto County Road B and approaching the Kickapoo River.
There was a bottle of whisky on the seat next to him.
“It wasn’t open!” Johnson said, laughing.
But the idea hit him: a local distillery, making spirits from grains grown by his farm friends down the road, distilled near the Kickapoo River where he lived and raised his family.
On Wednesday, Sept. 5, the dream came to fruition, with Round Rivers Distillery and tasting room officially opening in Viroqua, Wisconsin.
The name is a nod to the Kickapoo River, where the idea was born. It also comes from an essay by the Wisconsin Conservationist Aldo Leopold, who wrote of the fabled round river of an old Wisconsin folktale that trapped Paul Bunyan and his fellow lumberjacks floating logs endlessly in a circle. For Leopold, he used this metaphor to talk about how all aspects of ecology–the soil, plants, humans, every fly and frog–– are actually connected to one another, not severed and apart.
For Johnson, this perspective shaped his business practice.
“How do we have all these things in our lives that we enjoy, whether it be local beef, bourbon or the buildings we live in,” asked Johnson, “How do we do that without destroying these beautiful places?”
It began with saving the building on the south edge of Main St. on the way out of Viroqua, which, when Johnson bought it, would rain indoors. While the appraiser encouraged him to tear it down, Dan was determined to refurbish it instead of wasting the materials.
“There are alternatives,” he said. “There’s always the option to do something different.”
Leopold’s “Round River” philosophy also shapes how Johnson views his products.
“Bourbon, 70% of its flavor comes from the time it spends in the barrel,” Johnson said.
That means the white oaks in the forest that are made into the barrels are just as important as the corn grown by Johnson’s friend Josh Engel of Driftless Organics for their bourbon.
At the business’ ribbon cutting, Johnson also pointed to the large community of people that made the business possible: first and foremost, Johnson’s wife Danielle and son Liam. From the City of Viroqua, which amended the zoning so they could turn the building into a distillery, to USDA grants to help with storm water issues on the property, and the huge team of people who renovated the building, marketed the product, and encouraged the distillery, there’s no room for doubt in Aldo Leopold’s theory: it takes a connected community.
Daymoon Japanese Restaurant
Unforeseen collaborations grew from the process.
Cole Wilbricht and Katie Fuller had planned to move to the area a year and a half ago, to a place just south of Readstown. But two weeks before they were planning to arrive, the housing fell through. Frantically, Fuller posted on the Facebook Page “Viroqua Area Folks” to ask about housing. Instead, the Johnsons reached out, and mentioned that they were building a distillery, with room for a restaurant.
Wilbricht and Fuller decided to open up a Japanese restaurant in the other half of the building.
“We want to be able to support Viroqua and the farmers,” Wilbricht said. “This place is built by the community for the community.”
The couple grew up in Dubuque, Iowa, but was most recently living in Brooklyn, where Wilbricht worked in restaurants and the couple dreamed of someday opening their own. Without the partnership with the Round River Distillery, the couple wouldn’t have been able to start a restaurant for the next ten years, they said.
“It’s so impossible to do this alone,” Fuller said.
Daymoon is currently open for business Friday-Sunday 5:00 to 10:00 p.m. at 741 S Main St, Viroqua, with windows inside the restaurant looking onto Round River’s Distillery. Round River spirits can be found at the Readstown Kwikstop and Viroqua Food Co-op, as well as other locations statewide.
“It takes a village, and Viroqua is such a cooky, wild village,” Wilbricht said.
Julia Buskirk reports, paints, and writes fiction in Southwestern Wisconsin. She is a graduate of UW-Madison where she studied Conservation Biology and Journalism.
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