ALLEGRO
BREWERY
KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY (SORT OF)
CARL HELRICH-OWNER/WINEMAKER AT ALLEGRO WINERY
In college, I was that guy who would always buy different beers to try them out (although mostly with an eye to figuring out the best beer for your buck: the winner back then was Hamms.) A few years later, I ended up brewing my first beer when I was 23 years old. I ended up brewing around 30 batches of beer by the time I was 28, eventually graduating to all grain brewing. I’d spend 12 hours on a Saturday brewing beer to end up with four cases of beer I could be proud of and enjoy. Years ago, when we were really struggling as a winery in Brogue, I had the idea of adding on a brewery to the winery here in Brogue. Unfortunately, things were so tight we didn’t have the funds nor the time to actually put the idea in to motion. (I don't wear cutoffs anymore by the way)
The last piece was finding a brewer, and it turned out I didn’t have to look far. When people find out that we have kids, they always ask if they’re going to take over the winery at some point. As any of you with kids know, we have never had any idea, nor did we ever want to push them in the winery direction. But Dylan has been working in the vineyard and winery for the past few years, and the more I talked about brewing beer, the more he was interested in it. This is a guy who cut his teeth on Reserve Chardonnays and Cadenzas. Brewing beer is simply a natural extensio​n.
