Charlottesville Born

Charlottesville native Mark Thompson was living and brewing in Portland, OR, in the early 1990s, at the beginning of the Craft Beer Revolution, when a friend from back home contacted him. He had a hankering to start a brewpub and music hall, and would Mark come back and help him do it. He would and did. In 1999, they started Starr Hill Brewery on West Main Street in the same space that had once held Virginia’s first craft beer operation, the Blue Ridge Brewing Company.

1999 has Starr Hill open before every other current C’Ville craft brewery except for South Street, which opened months earlier in 1998. Today, Mark Thompson has moved on to found and run Brewing Tree Beer Company in Nelson, Co. (Tell him we said, “Hi.”), but Starr Hill continues — the second oldest existing craft brewery in Virginia and still independently owned.

This week, even though they’re just down the street, we pour some beers from Starr Hill Brewery. Please join us any time between 5:00 and 6:30 PM.