FINDING THE JOY

Alex ’03 & Emily Wenner ’03’s Hudson Valley brewery takes flight.

By Lucia Mulder

When seen from the entrance of the long, winding driveway, Lasting Joy Brewery resembles a modern take on a classic farmstead amid the rolling green landscape of New York’s Hudson Valley. With a shining new brewhouse in the renovated barn and a 60-seat, glass-walled tasting room that lets in the light and the ambiance of the outdoors, the Tivoli, New York brewery has been attracting both locals and tourists since opening in June of 2022. But it’s the warmth and care of co-CEOs Alex Wenner and Emily (Eisen-Berkeley) Wenner that make this destination brewery something special.

Alex and Emily’s partnership dates back to 2003, when they were both seniors at Berkshire, enrolled in Hilary Russell’s afternoon boat-building program. “That was probably my favorite experience at Berkshire,” said Emily.

“Mr. Russell was very devoted to us doing everything by hand as much as we could.” Along with running the boatbuilding program, Mr. Russell taught English at Berkshire for 24 years.

“A lot of what Emily and I got out of that program was realizing just how well we could work together,” Alex added. Emily jumped back in, “Hands-on problem solving, working together, and dividing things up into your skill sets and interests has been something that’s stuck with us.”

The pair has been together ever since Berkshire. Alex attended NYU, and Emily transferred from the University of Puget Sound to the Eugene Lang College at the New School in New York, allowing the couple to live in the same city. They were married in 2007 and moved to the Hudson Valley with their four school-aged children in 2018.

Since then, they have been balancing raising their children, building their dream business—a process that was prolonged due to the shipping and supply chain delays of the pandemic— and putting down roots in the community. “I can definitely say that if it wasn’t for Berkshire, I don’t think either one of us would have wanted to move,” Alex said. “Being back up here felt very much like coming home.”

While Alex is Lasting Joy’s head brewer, Emily helps oversee strategic

Emily and Alex in Hilary Russell’s boat-building program, spring 2003.

Photo courtesy of Hilary Russell operations as well as branding and marketing initiatives. Their skills complement each other, and their strong sense of place pervades the operation. “People see the space as a community gathering place,” explained Emily. “And because we’re raising four kids here, we feel really connected to the community and very lucky that people have embraced us. There are a lot of things that affirm the vision and the hope that we had for it. People really relate to the brand, the idea of joy.”

Alex has been passionate about brewing for over two decades. He earned his associate’s degree in brewing science and technology from Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago in 2010 and worked at breweries in Fairfield, N.J., Brooklyn, and Coney Island before heading upstate to start Lasting Joy. In addition to feeling familiar to the Wenners, the Hudson Valley also has a rich culture of farm-to-table and craft beer production.

Because the New York Farm Brewery license requires that a beer must be made primarily from locally grown hops, malt, and other ingredients, the rise in craft breweries in the Hudson Valley has been a boon to the state’s farmers and hops growers, a commitment that aligns with the Wenners’ vision for Lasting Joy.

“The license helps to promote agriculture and agritourism, so it’s a very cool program, and it incentivizes us to work as locally as we can,” said Emily. “I’ve wanted to have my own brewery for a while now,” Alex added. “And the license was definitely a big driver in building it here and doing it in the way that we’re doing it.”

While maintaining the designated New York State Brewery status requires that at least 60% of a beer’s ingredients come from New York State, the Wenners, in close collaboration with farm partners, are procuring almost 100% of their ingredients locally. “We’re well above the requirement and that’s really just a personal choice,” Alex said.

Take their Heartbeet of the Hudson stout. New York State happens to produce about one third of the country’s beets. So Alex, in a blend of resourcefulness and creativity, crafted a brew to take advantage of this plentiful supply. “I thought a nice, earthy British stout would work very well with the richness you’d normally expect from beets, but by not adding so much of them that you get the intense vegetal flavor, it captures the earthiness without being overpowering.” lastingjoybrewery.com

The result is the beer that exemplifies Lasting Joy’s mission: “My goal is to make classic, Old World-style beers with a New York farm twist,” he said.

Customers are responding to Alex’s recipes for classic beer. The brewery celebrated its one-year anniversary in June, and just before that milestone they were already expanding with the addition of a new tank for the brewhouse and a 15-person staff on hand for the high season. Lasting Joy beer was made available this summer in New York City and Long Island, N.Y., thanks to a springtime distribution deal. And Berkshire alumni heartily enjoyed Lasting Joy’s Two Rivers Pilsner, Clouds Over Claremont, and West Coast IPA over Reunion Weekend.

“We’re happy we found each other,” Emily said. “We really did take a lot of what we learned at Berkshire into our life together and into this enterprise of thinking creatively and building something together.” It sounds like an outlook with all the ingredients to a recipe for lasting joy.