If I Owned a Brewery Part 2 - Marketing

Here in Paradise, Wineries are a big tourist draw.  There are10 wineries in the area, and two winery associations: Wine Road 290 for the local wineries; and Texas Wine Trail that lists all of the wineries in the Texas Hill Country, including the 10 along US Highway 290.  On any given Saturday, hundreds, if not thousands, of people "winery crawl" from place to place.

A few years ago, Blue Mountain Brewery in Afton, Virginia, appeared on the Brewing Network.  Owner/Brewer Taylor Smack talked about he was trying to make his winery less industrial and more agrarian, and try to capitalize on the wine tourists.  He talked about growing hops and barley to use in his beers.  I thought that was a damn fine idea, and began thinking about a brewery like that in Texas.

Wouldn't it be great, I thought, to open a brewery along Wine Road 290 that grew the barley and hops that is used in the beer? Or at least some of it.  Sierra Nevada is making estate beer, so why not me?  (Besides the fact I'm not a farmer and don't want to be one.)  The place I envisioned looked a lot like the Stone Brewery in Escondido, California, complete with a restaurant out front, mixed with Oskar Blues' farm outside of Longmont, CO.

Now I read about some breweries in Upstate New York have joined together to create a Beer Trail, Finger Lakes Beer Trail Marketing & Tourism Association.

Maybe great minds do think alike.

Oh, and my State Representatives would get all the free beer they want.