Santa Rosa-based breweries bring home honors from Great American Beer Fest

Three Sonoma County brewers are coming off heady wins at the Great American Beer Festival, the beer world’s top awards event, held last weekend in Denver.

Santa Rosa’s Third Street Aleworks, Moonlight Brewing Co. and Russian River Brewing Co. were honored at the festival Oct. 6-8 in its first outing since 2019 when the pandemic scuttled celebrations.

Third Street Aleworks brought home gold in the stout category for its Blarney Sisters’ Dry Irish Stout, while Moonlight Brewing Co. earned top honors for its saison, Wee Nibble.

“We think all of our beers are award-winning, but it’s nice to be recognized,” said Erin Latham-Ponneck, general manager of Moonlight Brewing Co. “We’re very happy and very proud.”

Matt Vella, co-owner of Third Street Aleworks, said, as far as they know, Blarney Sisters’ is the Great American Beer Festival’s most-awarded beer, having won awards dating back to 2002.

“We’re kind of shocked. We were going up against so many different styles of stout, and for ours being a drier stout, it was a big surprise and we couldn’t be more happy,” Vella said.

Russian River Brewing Co. earned silver recognition in the barrel-aged sour category for Intinction, its sauvignon blanc barrel-aged pilsner. Intinction also undergoes a secondary fermentation with sauvignon blanc grape juice grown at Dutton Vineyards in the Russian River Valley.

“It’s a cool accolade for us because we live in Sonoma County and we’re able to produce a beer with an interesting wine twist,” said Natalie Cilurzo, owner of Russian River Brewing Co.

Vella also noted all three Santa Rosa winners this year were also the first three breweries to open in Santa Rosa.

“I don’t think that’s happened before,” he said.

The winning beers are currently available on tap at each of the breweries. Moonlight also offers Wee Nibble in cans, while Russian River sells Intinction by the bottle. Third Street already has sold out of cans of Blarney Sisters’ stout, but Vella said they plan to brew it again for a release in conjunction with St. Patrick’s Day.

The Great American Beer Festival is the nation’s largest commercial beer competition and had almost 10,000 entries from 2,154 U.S breweries this year.

Third Street Aleworks is at 610 Third St. and Moonlight Brewing Co. is at 3350 Coffey Lane, both in Santa Rosa. Russian River Brewing Co. is at 725 Fourth St. in Santa Rosa and at 707 Mitchell Lane in Windsor.

You can reach staff writer Jennifer Graue at jennifer.graue@pressdemocrat.com