Our History
Craft Brewing Pioneers Since 1987
The Beginning
Anderson Valley Brewing Company was founded on December 26th, 1987 in the town of Boonville, CA. In the beginning, we brewed out of a modest 10-barrel brewhouse located in the lower level of our original brewpub, The Buckhorn Saloon. At the time, we were one of only 20 craft breweries in the country and have long been considered one of the pioneers of the craft beer industry.
Demand and Growth
By 1995, the demand for our award winning ales exceeded the capacity of our 10-barrel brewery, so we built on our current facility at the corner of Highways 128 and 253, just one mile down the road from the Buckhorn Saloon. Surrounded by rolling hills peppered with century-old oaks to the west and towering redwood forests to the east, our 28-acre property houses a 100-barrel brewhouse, tasting room, beer garden, 10,000 sq ft lounge lawn, an unknown number of fairy doors hidden in tree trunks, an outdoor music stage and is home to the first 18-hole disc golf course ever to be built at a brewery.
The Bourbon Barl Series
In 2011, we established an exclusive partnership with a leading bourbon maker, which brought about our Barl Series of bourbon barrel-aged beers. This collaboration gives us a consistent source of barrels, allowing our brewers to create world-class, barrel-aged beers with a distinctive bourbon character such as our Bourbon Barrel Stout, Salted Caramel Porter, Pinchy Jeek Barl, and Huge Arker Imperial Stout.
Rebirth of the Gose
Never one to stop innovating, in 2013 we began experimenting with a 1,000 year old nearly extinct style of beer know as gose (pronounced “go-zuh”.) This traditional German-style wheat beer was known for its tart and salty flavor profile that was created through open fermentation and the high saline content of the water found in Goslar, Germany, where the style originated. After months of pilot brews and refinement of our kettle-souring process, we finally created an original recipe that came to be known as The Holy Gose. Released in the spring of 2014, it was the first canned gose to be offered year-round and was an instant success and it has often been credited with the revival and meteoric rise of the gose style in today’s craft beer industry. Since then, we’ve gone on to create several other flavored variations such as Blood Orange, Briney Melon, Cherry, Peach, POG and the cocktail-inspired G&T Gose.
A Thirst for Innovation
Over the years, we have also expanded our barrel aging program to include a variety of wine barrel-aged sour beers. The aromas and flavor profiles of these unique offerings vary greatly due to the extensive aging process and the nature of the bacteria, wild yeasts, and brettanomyces found in the barrels. Ranging from golden, slightly tart ales such as our Horse Tongue Wheat to the dark, rich and woody Gatlin Damnosus Sour Barleywine, we continue to innovate and push the envelope of barrel-aging to explore new flavors and create world-class sour beers with complexity and balance.
