E-Mail This Article to a Friend Drink locally A tour of some of New England’s best breweries, wineries, and distilleries BY MIKE MILIARD
	Where to find them — MM • Buzzards Bay Brewing, 98 Horseneck Road, Westport, (508) 636-2288. • Geary’s, 38 Evergreen Drive, Portland, Maine, (207) 878-2337. • Harpoon Brewery, 306 Northern Avenue, Boston, (888) HARPOON. • Magic Hat Brewing, 5 Bartlett Bay Road, South Burlington, Vermont, (802) 658-BREW. • Newport Vineyards, 909 East Main Road (Route 138), Middletown, Rhode Island, (401) 848-5161. • Red Hook Brewery, 35 Corporate Drive, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, (603) 430-8600. • Sakonnet Vineyards, 162 West Main Road, Little Compton, Rhode Island, (800) 919-4637. • Sam Adams, 30 Germania Street, Jamaica Plain, (617) 368-5080. • Triple Eight Distillery, PO Box 2928, Nantucket, (508) 325-5929. • Westport Rivers Winery, 417 Hixbridge Road, Westport, (800) 993-9695.

Its fabled puritan morality and archaic Blue Laws notwithstanding, New England has always embraced beverages both fermented and distilled.

"The first brewery in the English colonies was in Watertown," says Boston Beer Company’s founder, Jim Koch. "It was founded in 1635 — the year before Harvard was founded ... first things first! At the turn of the 20th century, Boston had 21 breweries in the city limits, which was more breweries per capita than any other city in the US."

But then things changed. "First Prohibition, and then the creeping domination of the enormous national breweries slowly put them out of business," Koch says. By the late 1960s, the region was all but bereft of local breweries, and "quality beer" meant imported suds like Heineken. Enter Koch, a sixth-generation brewer. "I made the first batch of Sam Adams in my kitchen in 1984. At a time when breweries were closing rather than opening, the idea of world-class American beer was an oxymoron. People thought I was out of my mind! Including all the distributors. The only way I could get my beer in drinkers’ glasses was to go bar to bar with cold beer in my briefcase." Six weeks after Samuel Adams Boston Lager hit the market, it was voted Best Beer in America at the Great American Beer Festival.

Two decades later, with six year-round styles and an ever-evolving handful of seasonal and specialty styles, Boston Beer Company is a giant — relatively speaking. At just a little over half a percent of the US beer market, it’s "the largest of the small," Koch says. "Anheuser-Busch literally spills more than we brew in a year." But the large number of craft brewers that has sprung up in its wake is a tribute to the company’s success. New England is now a mecca of microbreweries. And while Southern New England boasts a goodly number of ever-more-respected wineries and even a handful of distilleries, beer is king. Koch is pleased with the legacy he’s helped foster. "One of the reasons I named my beer Sam Adams was that I wanted to start a beer revolution in the United States," he says. "To declare our independence from foreign beer."

One of the first to follow in Samuel Adams’s footsteps was Harpoon Brewery. Founded in 1986 by Dan Kenary and Rich Doyle, it’s a company that has always recognized the importance not just of being a good brewer, but of being a good citizen, showing a strong commitment to Boston’s "social fabric." Example: its mammoth annual Oktoberfest and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, and the summer Brewstock Festival, which find thousands thronging under spacious tents consuming copious plastic cups of Harpoon’s fine ales. (Two of the best: the hoppy tang of its ubiquitous IPA, and the lemony zest of its UFO Hefeweizen.) In recent years, Harpoon has expanded its base of operations to the North Country, purchasing the Catamont brewery in Windsor, Vermont, where it makes the 100 Barrel Series, a specialty line designed to give Harpoon brewers a golden moment to strut their stuff with a limited run of their choosing (so far, they’ve done an oatmeal stout, an abbey-style dubbel, a Belgian wit beer, and a barleywine). The brewery also makes Vermont Draft Soda, the ideal Harpoon product line for kids and teetotalers alike.

Summer is fast approaching, and when it finally arrives, there’s no better place to be than the coast of Maine. And Geary’s, especially its flagship Pale Ale, is the beer to drink while you’re there. Founded in 1986, Geary’s lays claim to being the first microbrewery in New England. (Sam Adams came first, but it was initially contract-brewed in Pittsburgh.)

Geary’s concentrates on just six beers, three full-time brews (Pale Ale, London Porter, and the robust Hampshire Special Ale, which is called one of the best two dozen beers in America by pre-eminent beer critic Michael Jackson), and three seasonals (summer, winter, and autumn). "It’s a pretty good line-up of beers," owner David Geary says modestly of his exquisitely crafted ales. Like Jim Koch, Geary is happy with the innumerable craft brewers in the Pine Tree State that have sprung up in his wake — from Shipyard to Allagash to Gritty McDuff’s. "I’m really proud of the state of Maine for being at the forefront of craft brewing in this country."

New England and the Pacific Northwest are twin epicenters of American microbrewing, but Geary notes a difference, generally speaking, in the two regions’ philosophies. While beers in the East veer "more conservative and traditional, with more balance, more elegance," those from Washington, Oregon, and Northern California tend to be "over-hopped ... big on profile." But what about companies that have one foot in each region? On the tiny sliver of shore between Massachusetts and Maine, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sits Red Hook Brewery, the East Coast outpost of one of Washington State’s first and finest microbreweries. Be it its bracingly bitter ESB or the pungent, hoppy IPA, the dark and hearty Winterhook or the light summer specialty Sunrye, Red Hook is at the top of its game, no matter where the beers are brewed. Don’t believe us? Stop in for a brewery tour (every day at 2 p.m., with extra times on the weekend).

Next door to New Hampshire is Vermont, a state that’s home to many hippies. The folks at Burlington’s Magic Hat Brewing — with its trippy-dippy label designs, nuggets of quasi-profound philosophy printed inside the bottle caps, and beer names like Fat Angel, Humble Patience, and Hocus Pocus — don’t do much to dispel the stereotype. They do, however, make some damn fine beers. Besides their staples, especially the ever-popular apricot-infused #9, their line of "Humdinger" artisanal brews, like the honey-brewed Braggot Ale and the darkly alluring Thumbsucker Vermont Imperial Stout, only heighten their mastery of the craft.

Buzzards Bay Brewing, established in 1997, sits on a majestic 140-acre farm in Westport, not far from the island-dotted, azure expanse of its namesake. And while it may be situated some distance from the inland mountains, those huge hunks of rock can be thanked for the quality of its beers. Geologists surmise that the crystal-clear spring water used in the brewing process is pushed to the surface by the weight of the White Mountains to the north. The Buzzards Bay team, led by brewmaster Chris Atkinson, take it as their mission to emulate the classic, drinkable styles of Old World Europe. Be it their Dortmund-style Buzzards Bay Lager, the Golden Bavarian, the classic English pale ale, or specialty small-batch releases like their marzen, maibock, and wheat beers, they strive to find the perfect synergy of craftsmanship, balance, and drinkability.