Looking for stocking stuffers for the local beer drinker in your life? The one-year-old Shenandoah Beerwerks Trail, a route of 14 craft breweries in the region, recently launched a passport program, making it even easier for beer fans to sink local suds over the holidays. WMRA's Jessie Knadler has the details.
How it works: Beer drinkers pick up a passport and request a stamp at any of the 14 craft breweries along the trail – Seven Arrows in Waynesboro, The Friendly Fermenter in Harrisonburg. Once at least six stamps have been collected, beer drinkers can mail it in to receive a t-shirt.
COURTNEY CRANOR: With the passport, visitors are encouraged to stay in the area longer, visit more breweries and enjoy more of what the Valley has to offer.
Courtney Cranor is assistant director of the City of Waynesboro’s Tourism Office. It’s one of five local tourism offices that helped launch the program as a way to promote the area’s craft brew scene with tie-ins to local tourism. There’s state money behind it. The passport program is funded in part by a grant that was awarded by Governor McAuliffe in the fall.
CRANOR: We’re already seeing a great deal of enthusiasm. I actually had someone waiting in my office the day after it launched with completed passport in hand.
No wonder. The first person to turn in a completed passport received two tickets to the Red Wing Roots Music Festival in July.
