‘Our State’ Magazine Features Weeping Radish As NC’s First Craft Brewery
The latest issue of Our State profiles Weeping Radish owner Uli Bennewitz, who opened North Carolina’s first craft brewery in Manteo more than 30 years ago and ended up changing the future of brewing in the state.
First opening in 1986, Weeping Radish still distributes its own beer, with a van and sales rep, to just 40 restaurants and stores here on the Outer Banks, and there is no warehouse.
As Our State reports, In the early ’80s, Bennewitz had to first work with state legislatures to change a state law that did not allow brewers to sell beer directly to the public. When the bill passed, it did so on assurances from lawmakers that this was really just a bill to allow a little tourist stop on the Outer Banks to operate, but it ended up being the law that allowed brewpubs to exist in North Carolina.
At the time that the bill was passed, Weeping Radish was the only microbrewery in the Southeast, and one of only 100 in the entire country.
Bennewitz is called “the founding father of North Carolina craft brewing.” You can read the full story here.
After outgrowing the original Weeping Radish Restaurant and Brewery in Manteo, the much larger Weeping Radish Farm Brewery opened in 2005, located in Grandy about 35 minutes north of the old location, in Currituck County.
Weeping Radish Farm Brewery (photo: Currituck Department of Tourism)
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