Tucker Robinson believes beer is best consumed with other people.
So he made that a central tenet of WildEdge Brewing Collective, the business he started nearly two years ago.
“We built the space for that purpose,” he said. “Notice we don’t have any televisions. And that was purposeful.”
Now, with two years under its belt, the brewery along North Market Street has found its niche in Cortez as a local watering hole and community space. And its owners and staff are marking the occasion on April 13 with a “thank you” celebration, featuring music, yoga and, of course, brews.
“It’s been crazy, it’s exceeded all of my expectations for the first two years,” Robinson said. “It’s been pretty humbling as to how warmly we’ve been welcomed into the community.”
Robinson has lived in the area since 2006. He was working as an archaeologist until 2016, when he decided to leave archaeology and interned at a friend’s brewery in his hometown in upstate New York. The internship gave him hands-on experience and pushed him to pursue his longtime dream of opening a brewery – and he felt there was a need for one in Cortez.
“We wanted to be a positive influence on this community that’s changing,” he said. “We’re definitely a tourist town, we’re getting a younger demographic coming in here. And we wanted to help fuel positive change in this community.”
Amy Meyerhofer, who met Robinson through her partner, joined him. Previously, she had been working with at-risk youth in Alaska, but had experience in the bar and restaurant business.
“I’m really appreciative of being able to move into such a beautiful place and being welcomed into such a good family,” she said. Now, Meyerhofer is the bar manager and events coordinator for WildEdge.
The space at 111 N. Market St. had been vacant for the past three decades, Robinson said. So he and his business partners decided to lease the space and brighten up “a sleepy corner of Cortez.”
Getting off the ground presented the greatest challenge, he said. Beyond the physical necessities of electrical cords and stocking the space, there were plenty of bureaucratic hurdles.
“The regulatory hurdles with dealing with alcohol are pretty steep,” he said. “It took us nine months to get our federal production permit, with a 300-page application.”
The area also had to be rezoned for business use, requiring appearances before the Cortez City Council and Planning and Zoning Commission.
They eventually opened on April 14, 2017.
WildEdge is a very small brewery, Robinson said, brewing on a “five-barrel system,” according to governmental categorizations. They have four full-time employees and one part-time employee. Robinson handles the brewing, although a fellow staff member has joined him on the production team.
They’ve become known for their sour beers. This includes beers produced through a kettle souring process, which is “quick turnaround,” Robinson said, but also those made through their more in-depth barrel-aged beer program.
“We’re actually using wine barrels to age beer in, with a variety of yeast and bacteria,” he said. “And that creates a very complex, nuanced beer that quite honestly more resembles wine.”
Their name embodies what they hope to represent.
“We wanted our name to really be place-specific,” Robinson said, adding that they wanted to include the continued wildness of this corner of Colorado. Even their beer is wild, he said, since sour beers tend to use more bacteria and yeast – some beer is brewed using yeast he caught in Montezuma County.
And being a “collective” represents another crucial element to what they hope to represent, not only because it distinguishes them from other breweries, but also because of the community implications.
They’ve watched friendships bloom in their bar room, and on any given night, they might know about 75% of their customers, Robinson said. And their preferred drink.
While small, they now distribute their brews locally, to Mancos and Durango and up to Telluride.
Tourists passing through the area have come to frequent WildEdge, but locals keep them in business, Robinson said. They host bands, hold trivia nights, and Meyerhofer leads “Yoga and Brews” each month.
They have put together a menu to complement their drinks, from street tacos to their ever-popular pretzels.
Pretzel buns will be featured at the celebration, along with a strawberry milkshake IPA and WildOne, a beer fermented with Montezuma County yeast and bacteria and aged in a wine barrel from Sutcliffe Vineyards.
The celebration will begin at 11 a.m. with a Yoga and Brews class. Local musicians Josh Standard and the Flume Canyon Boys are set to perform live at 7 p.m.
ealvero@the-journal.com
