Hail to the “Red White and Brew!” It’s as patriotic as it gets. With Budweiser already lost to the Belgians, the greater Charlottesville area is poised to challenge the beer market. And the surrounding wineries.
The Devil’s Backbone Brewery, named for the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains, will join a triad of well-established names: Blue Mountain Brewery in Afton, Starr Hill Brewery in Crozet and South Street Brewery in Charlottesville. The breweries, along with tourism officials from Nelson County, are organizing the first beer trail in Virginia, aiming to compete with their beloved and successful wine-making counterparts.
Construction is almost complete on the Devil’s Backbone spot, located near the Wintergreen ski and golf resort. The Daily Progress reports that the new brewery will be the fourth of its kind in the greater Charlottesville area when it opens in November.
And the numbers don’t lie. The Virginia Tourism Corporation estimates that 1.8 percent of the visitors who visited the state in 2007 came for its winery tours and wine tastings at 134 wineries, for a grand total of $70 million in retail sales.
So, why not beer?
One selling point of the trail would be the varieties of beer available for tasting (and guzzling). According to the article, the Devil’s Backbone alone will offer four different styles of beer regularly: a German-style Helles golden lager, a Vienna amber lager, a hefeweizen and an American IPA. Also in the works are plans to offer two rotating taps of a Belgian-style beer.
The set list of breweries participating in the trail is yet to be decided, but Starr Hill, Blue Mountain and the Devil’s Backbone are sure picks for their relative vicinity to one another. Other possibilities are the South Street Brewery and several others in the Shenandoah Valley.