![]() ![]() In many ways, we have our future in our own hands because we’re not leasing a space that could get out of hand in price. We don’t have any regrets being where we are. “We feel that we’re in a very good location, even though we’re outside the buzz,” Wong says. All of which is to say: people don’t have to leave downtown to find whatever they want when it comes to beer. Expand that to the greater metro area and, according to the Chamber of Commerce, the concentration of all breweries is 7.5 times the national average. It’s easy to get there from right off Interstate 240-just 10 minutes.īut place a pin in Asheville’s center and there’s a dozen breweries to visit within a mile radius. ![]() The handful of miles that connects downtown Asheville to Highland’s location on Old Charlotte Highway comes across as a metaphorical roadblock. Beer had been a fun distraction to pass his time, but when he retired early and wound up in Asheville, he says he decided to start Highland as a “hobby” along with experienced brewers John McDermott and John Lyda. While brewing “barely drinkable beer” during the 1960s, he worked toward an engineering degree that led to a career dealing with nuclear waste. ![]() The Jamaican-born son of Chinese immigrants first came to the U.S. I’ll be patient and I’ll be around.”īy today’s standards, let alone the brewing industry of the mid-’90s, Wong is an outlier. I just told them it’ll take them time and that’s OK. People thought it was too strong or too bitter or too heavy because they were used to light Lagers. “I even had a good friend of mine at a party say, ‘Oscar, you’re going to go broke trying to sell this shit.’ That was the biggest problem-to get people to accept craft beer. “There was a challenge in getting people to accept the beer,” says founder-and Leah’s father-Oscar Wong.
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