In 1999, UW–Madison celebrated its 150th anniversary (its “sesquicentennial”) with a commemorative ice-cream flavor from Babcock Dairy. To share the festivities with Badgers beyond campus, they held a statewide contest to create the commemorative flavor. From nearly 800 submissions, they churned out 10 finalists including “Bucky’s Birthday Brickle” and “Sesquiberry.”
But when the flavors were sampled and spoons were down, the announcer of the winning flavor could only say, “If I could sing it, I would, but I won’t.” Praise to Thee Our Almond Mocha, the invention of Al Ruplinger ’93, reigned ice-cream supreme. After trying our hand at re-creating this legend-dairy flavor, we caught up with Ruplinger to talk about his claim to ice-cream fame.
How did you come up with Praise to Thee Our Almond Mocha?
I don’t remember if my roommate had found [the contest] or if I did, but we came up with a few ideas, and that was mine. … The beauty of the “almond mocha” was once I came up with the name, the flavor was there: almonds with mocha. … My roommate — still my best friend to this day, the man who made me well, Bill “B.J.” Wright ’95 — he was a food-science major in school, so he knew the lingo. I thought maybe that gave us a little bit of an advantage. I asked him the other day, “What was the word you had me use when I submitted?” And it was variegate: instead of saying a “ripple,” it was a “mocha variegate.”
Did you brainstorm any other flavors besides the one you ended up submitting?
My girlfriend at the time — my now-wife, Gayle — submitted what I thought was a great name, too: Moo-Rah-Rah Wisconsin.
How did you find out that you were a finalist?
Quite frankly, I kind of forgot about it after doing it. My sister, Carol, called me — she lives in Sun Prairie — and she asked me about the ice-cream flavor. I didn’t know what she was talking about. It turns out, one day, the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal had an article with the 10 finalists and had me listed as a finalist.
The winner of the contest got five gallons of their flavor, lunch at the chancellor’s house, and tickets to that year’s Homecoming football game. What was it like to win?
Even before I won, when I was a finalist, Fox 6 News in Milwaukee came and interviewed me. We met at a grocery store, in the ice-cream aisle, and we walked down the aisle and just talked ice cream. Van Halen has a song called “Ice Cream Man,” and they played that as the intro. I also found a letter from the chancellor’s office [with] a couple AP clips. One was from Long Island, and one was from San Francisco.
And then one day, I was traveling for work, and I talked to Gayle and she said, “You have a message from The Tonight Show.” And I’m thinking, “You got to be kidding, right?" But sure enough, she played the message back, and it was Michelle with The Tonight Show, and I remember her saying, “We’re very interested in doing a story with you.” … One of the first things she asked was that I send a video of my ice-cream operation to her, and I said, “Oh, maybe you don’t understand. I don’t actually make the ice cream; I just named it.” It went downhill from there.
Praise to Thee is no longer in Babcock’s rotation, but your memories of it (and those of fellow Badgers who miss it) are strong. Care to share a message to its loyal fans?
Back in ’99, I dedicated the ice cream to my fellow Badger football fans in Section I. We still have the same season tickets, 25 years later, in Section I, and have a lot of the same friends sitting around us. So I would, again, like to give a shout-out to Section I, my friends and family in that section, including my brother, Randy “Rups” Ruplinger ’91; Scott “Beaker” Longua ’91, MBA’98; and Kurt “Tuppy” Lindsley ’93.
