(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The sun is just beginning to set over the Hudson River, its waters about 2 miles west of my tasting room perch, when I momentarily forget where I am. The waning light streams through the two-story glass walls and refracts off blond laminated timber beams above. Outside, I see farmland and families, children scampering about the vast landscape. The server walks me through tasting notes for the precious liquids—light yellow to dark burgundy—in the stemless wine glasses arrayed on the polished marble bar. It’s not until I take a sip and taste not a riesling but a crisp Czech Pilsner that I’m reminded I’m not at a winery.
I silently toast the owners of Lasting Joy Brewery and say, “Job well done.” The brewer, which opened the current facility in 2022 in Tivoli, New York, is part of an area vanguard creating a Napa Valley in the Hudson Valley, but for beer. Out are the dark, industrial and usually male-dominated spaces typical of brewpub culture, where drinkers swagger through ever-lofty IBUs (international bitterness units—they’re a thing). In are modern, warm, whitewashed rooms, walkable gardens and welcoming tastings. There are even bees.
“Wineries are very hospitality-first. It’s not just the product they’re putting in front of you,” says Lasting Joy co-founder Emily Wenner. “You have to offer the experience.” As the once-booming craft industry starts to stagnate, in part because of saturation, merely having good beer is no longer enough.
To Wenner that means immersing guests in terroir like any good wine country would. From my stool on this late April Saturday, the windows frame hills blossoming with cherry, apple and peach orchards. I also see rows of corn and barley, all future ingredients in a grain-to-glass drinking session.
Others echo this approach on an emerging, if still unofficial, ale trail. The New York State Brewers Association has an app you can use to trace your own brewery crawl from 460-plus breweries across the state. And the state-supported Hudson Valley Tourism agency, which covers the 10-county, 150-mile stretch from New York City to Albany, mentions some 90 breweries in a print brochure, but only two per county online. So area entrepreneurs are doing their best to make it easier to connect the dots.
ReginaRose Lott, owner of the Brew Bus, has shuttled people among the region’s various distilleries, wineries and cideries since 2018 and says multistop beer tour requests now outweigh others, particularly to those outfits that emphasize atmosphere.
“The wineries have been in place for a while, and whether traditional or newer with a hipster vibe, they have these beautiful and romantic locations,” Lott says. “Breweries have managed to do the same thing. They’ve created these gorgeous venues, some for weddings and rehearsal dinners, and others have taken beautiful old buildings and given them life. It’s a big draw.”
The tipping point came in 2013, according to Lott, when the state enacted legislation allowing brewers to serve consumers directly if their beers were largely local by 2019: At least 60% of all hops and other ingredients would need to come from New York. This official “farm brewery” designation threw beermakers an economic lifeline, but it also gave these establishments in the agri-rich Hudson Valley an opportunity to showcase the region, both individually and collectively.
Arrowood Farms, in Ulster County across the river from Lasting Joy, takes the designation to its earthy, authentic extreme. It not only grows an acre of Cascade, Chinook and centennial hop vines in rows of 18-foot-tall trellises like some sort of giant’s vineyard, but it also strives for 100% New York‑grown ingredients, much of which are harvested on the 48 acres around its rustic taproom and the surrounding counties.
Those hops join cherries from its orchards, gooseberries and currants from its garden, honey from its beehives and even foraged mushrooms from its wooded land in seasonal, wild-fermented offerings. Arrowood says its on-site spring has a mineral profile reminiscent of water in the Czech Republic’s famous beermaking Plzeň region, and I believe it when tasting its Spring-Fed kölsch.
“We love connecting people with the natural world that enables their beer to exist,” says head brewer Matt Schulze, noting on-premise sales have doubled since 2018. “That’s the best way to weave those things into our story.”
Guests are invited to tour the farm and see and touch the roots of their products, which on my visit entails a tart Porch Beer: Grape, a wild-fermented ale made with Concord grapes and aged in an oak foeder (wooden vat), as well as the light and bubbly farmhouse table beer, aged in white wine barrels and then bottle-conditioned with a neighbor’s maple syrup.
You don’t make ambitious beers such as these without a sense of adventure, which translates into fun for curious drinkers. Brewers might be using sophisticated techniques, yes, but taproom education doesn’t come across as inaccessible. And it’s that shared openness that’s helped create an ad hoc route among Hudson Valley taprooms, much like the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and the broader Napa-Sonoma network that sprouted from tourists seeking second stops.
Schulze recommends I visit his friends at Plan Bee Farm Brewery, in a secluded corner of Poughkeepsie back on the other side of the river. There, couples congregate in a spare, barnlike taproom around a list long on yeasts isolated from their homemade honey. The most popular order this day—including mine—seems to be the soft, lemony sour Barn Beer wild ale.
Earlier at Lasting Joy, Wenner nudged me just up the road to Suarez Family Brewery, a literal mom and pop joint that retains all the back-road charm of its building’s Depression‑era heritage, first a tractor dealership then a 1970s lamp factory. Here, extended families sit at long tables and sample local ingenuity, such as the Domain Fruit (Blend 5), a funky saison made from a combination of two botanical country beers and two maltier brews. The roasty Bones Shirt is one of the best German-style black lagers I’ve quaffed anywhere.
Everyone will direct you to the Drowned Lands brewery, so named for the postglacial flooding that gave the Warwick area its famous rich, dark farm soil. Set up in a defunct reform school for boys, the elegantly reimagined grounds conjure a bustling winery, with a 3,000-square-foot patio and a 1,000-square-foot deck, both overlooking nearby Wawayanda Creek and the distant Appalachian Mountains. Inside, one end of the taproom offers a windowed view of the brewery’s oak foeders, in which my exquisitely light and bready Ploughshare altbier fermented.
The seven-year-old Hudson Valley Brewery may not be set on acres of upstate farmland, but its heart is, having built its national reputation for sour farmhouse ales and fruit-forward amalgam sour India pale ales, or IPAs, that utilize 100% New York-sourced wheat. The beer itself is made in an old mill in the middle of Beacon, a 19th century factory town that attracts weekenders from the city to the Dia Art Foundation museum. It’s one of 16 breweries here in Dutchess County, more than double the number since the farm brewery legislation passed.
Following a renovation last year, the brewery’s modern white taproom is flooded with natural light. Leatherbound tap lists, complete with tasting notes, wait on the bar. Patrons sip from stemware,as they mill about a retail section of bottles to go, some of which are different “vintages” of the labels on tap, and parents pull tables together for their kids to color on. Lines often stretch out the door.
Just as a sour IPA is a means to connect the traditional hophead with the even crazier world of wild ales, Hudson Valley Brewery’s tasting notes are welcoming and easy to understand; a mixed-berry variant of the wildly popular Silhouette sour IPAgets compared to a Nutri-Grain cereal bar and pink lemonade Fun Dip. Its Straylight sour IPA made with blueberry and lemon tastes like “white gummy sharks.” The overall vibe, like in many Hudson Valley breweries, is distinctly refined but not rarefied.
“Having fun with the tasting notes works better than things like ‘fresh-cut grass’ that’s harder to pin down,” says Harry Manning, the brewery’s marketing and sales manager. “We do make a higher-end product, and I think we market ourselves that way. But we want to break down the pretension.” After all, it’s still beer.
WHERE TO STAY
After a day of brewery hopping, the Maker is a keen base in the historic heart of Hudson. Eleven rooms (from $499 a night) evoke a robber baron’s bohemian hideaway—all leather, velour, brick and wood, plus a rainfall shower and heated stone bathroom floors. A thermos of hot coffee and a newspaper will be waiting at your door in the morning.
On the other side of the Hudson,Wildflower Farms is the new standard for luxury in the broader region. The Auberge resort consists of 65 striking, standalonecabins with access to a cosseting spa in its central lodge. Culinary programming is a highlight—think workshops on making focaccia with edible flowers, outdoor dinner parties thrownby globally renown chefs, or classes on botanical mixology.
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