Some 21 years ago, Gina Marsaglia and her brother Vince found themselves as owners of a little hole in the wall pizza establishment on the coast in Solana Beach (North County San Diego). This was long before Stone, AleSmith and Ballast Point helped put San Diego on the map as a beer town. Nope, back in 1987, there wasn’t any local craft brewed beer on tap at Pizza Port Solana Beach (although there was Sam Adams and Lowenbrau Dark).
Gina and Vince grew up in Colorado. Vince even did a summer work stint at Coors Brewing Company. This was long before a marketing genius figured Coors drinkers weren’t smart enough to know when their beer was cold enough to drink and thus developed the “blue mountains.”
Every year since 1993 when the brewery was installed Gina and Vince have headed back to Denver to attend the Great American Beer Festival. And each year, they have had the same conversation… “Wouldn’t it be great if our beer was available in Colorado?” Well Virginia there is a Santa Claus and starting tomorrow September 10, 2008 Port Brewing and Lost Abbey beers will finally be available in Colorado.
And to celebrate, we have asked “The King” (Chris Black of Falling Rock) to throw a party in honor of our arrival. The festivities kick off around 5:30 on Blake street and promise to be one hell of a party. We shipped out two fresh kegs of Wipeout IPA and Hop 15 along with Witch’s WIt and Judgment Day. Chris also received a special stash of Isabelle Proximus which he will make available as well. All told it promises to be a fantastic evening of drinking.
I will be flying out to Denver mid day on Wednesday and will remain in Colorado until Friday so that I can do a sales meeting with our new distributor Elite- Brands. If you haven’t heard of Elite Brands by now, that’s ok. The only thing you need to know about them is that they also are distributing Russian River which means there hopefully will be an abundance of well hopped California IPA and Double IPA streaming into the state to sit on the shelves.
I, for one, am excited to finally cross Colorado off our list of places to get to. It will be so very nice to stand in our booth at the Great American Beer Festival next month and be able to tell consumers where they can get our beers. Colorado is home to some of the best beer drinkers in the world. We hope like hell we will be able to satisfy their taste buds.
Post Great American Beer Festival, it looks like we will turn our attention to the Midwest and seek out some distribution in the greater Chicago area. We have been looking at this market long enough and it is time to move some beer towards the Great Lakes. If all goes well, you might even see some Lost Abbey beers on the shelves in time for Christmas. That won’t suck.
Lastly for the Northern California peeps, tomorrow our truck will point north towards the Bay Area in order to restock some of the stores in Northern California who have been supporting our brands. Look for a fresh set of Hop 15 bottles to arrive on scene along with numerous draft beers. If all goes well, some of these may even be on tap this weekend.