USA, CA: Napa Smith Brewing closes up shop in Napa

What had been shaping up as a big year for Napa County’s beer scene ended up on a down note as the valley’s only large-scale brewery closed up shop and moved with little fanfare, Napa Valley Register reported on December 30.

Napa Smith Brewing, a fixture in the industrial area at Highway 29 and Jameson Canyon Road, announced over the summer that it would make a major expansion, with a new brewery in Vallejo and production at an existing brewery in Nashville, Tennessee, home of R.S. Lipman Brothers, a beverage manufacturer and distributor that bought the brewery in the spring.

Left somewhat unclear, however, was the fate of the Napa facility, a brewery and taproom. Earlier this month, however, that facility closed with little public notice. Today, the sign by the highway is gone and the building stands vacant.

“It was born in Napa and we absolutely intend to keep a presence in Napa,” spokeswoman Angela Evans said.

“What happened is we couldn’t scale up to keep up with demand where we were.”

Vallejo offered more space and easier access to water, she said. The Napa facility closed this month and the entire staff of 14 remains on the payroll at the new location. They hope to open a new taproom in Vallejo in the first few months of the year.

Details of the future in Napa are still being worked out, she said; probably it will be in the form of a downtown taproom, possibly with some limited production capability for one-off or special beers.

“Napa Smith is an artisan beer born in heart of Napa Valley, and we are looking forward to a having a presence there in the near future,” she said.

Despite the fact that the flagship brewery is no longer in Napa County, Lipman intends to continue using the ”Napa Smith” name, she said.

“Napa Smith is a trademarked and copyrighted name, and it will remain our brand name,” she said.

Founded in 2008, Napa Smith boasts brewer Don Barkley, one of the pioneers of the early craft beer movement in the 1970s and ‘80s. It was the only brewery in the county to have more than a local distribution profile, though it was still small – just number 61 in production volume out of about 460 breweries in California alone.

The company said over the summer the expansions would increase the company’s capacity substantially, to almost 11,000 barrels, or the equivalent of 150,000 cases of 12-ounce bottles, annually. While still quite small by industry standards, the expansion vaults Napa Smith into the company of giants such as Sierra Nevada, Lagunitas, Stone, and New Belgium in having production facilities on both coasts, enabling them to reach a national market.

Previously, the Napa facility was able to produce just 60,000 cases, or about 4,300 barrels per year.

The beer is distributed in 10 states and two foreign countries – Costa Rica and Sweden. The company plans to add to that distribution range by expanding the Vallejo brewery and beginning production in Tennessee at a facility already used by another Lipman beer brand, Hap & Harry’s, sometime in 2017.

The company plans to expand the number of beers it makes and also venture into canning the beer, an increasingly popular packaging option for craft brewers, Evans said.

The loss of Napa Smith brewery was the one off note in a year that otherwise saw a dramatic expansion of Napa County’s beer industry, which had previously lagged far behind Sonoma County and other parts of the state in cashing in on the booming craft beer market.

The biggest news came in May, when Stone Brewing, one of the best-known names in craft brewing and the 15th largest American brewery, said it would open a production brewery and restaurant in the historic Borreo Building on the eastern bank of the Napa River in downtown Napa.

That means Napa joins Richmond, Virginia as the only place where Stone is produced outside its native San Diego County. Stone officials said they hoped to become active members of the community and use their considerable expertise and resources to nurture new small breweries in the region.

Although the Stone project was announced in May, the renovations of the building and the installation of the brewing system promised to be a long process, so opening day was planned for some time in 2017. Developer Kevin Teague said this month that everything seemed to be on track for the project and he hoped to have construction finished before the BottleRock music festival in May.

But other smaller projects made news as well, with plans for a small brewery in the old Tannery facility on the Napa River and a proposal for a brewery in Yountville. Berkeley-based Fieldwork Brewing, meanwhile, opened a taproom in the Oxbow market late this year.

For many years, Napa County seemed like inhospitable territory for beer. While Sonoma County grew to be home to several world-renowned breweries, and a large cloud of smaller cult breweries as well, Napa remained home mostly to small-scale breweries that distributed only in their own restaurants, such as Downtown Joe’s in Napa and Calistoga Inn.

By early in this decade, the picture was, if anything, getting worse, as Silverado Brewing Company in St. Helena closed permanently in 2012 and Calistoga Inn suffered a major fire the same year that closed the brewery for a year.

An effort to found an “ultra premium” brewery known as Napa Point Brewing in 2013 fell apart in a year after a series of business disputes. After the brewery closed, founder Robert Dahl was embroiled in a web of lawsuits when he shot a former business partner to death before taking his own life.

But by 2015, things seemed to be turning around in Napa County’s beer scene. Calistoga Inn rebounded robustly and several new beer venues opened, including Napa Palisades Saloon in downtown Napa and Hop Creek in Browns Valley.

Upvalley winemaker Nile Zacherle, meanwhile, opened Mad Fritz brewing in St.Helena, offering high-end beers priced and sold along the model of Napa County’s premium wines. While the capacity and distribution is quite limited, the beer has attracted the notice of beer connoisseurs and it has found a place at the bars of some of the valley’s most expensive restaurants (as well as St. Helena’s Cameo Cinema).

30 December, 2016