Pliny the Indie: Russian River Brewing’s rise to craft beer folk hero

It’s craft brewery buyout season. Last month, Lagunitas struck a deal with Heineken, Saint Archer sold to MillerCoors. Duvel got Firestone Walker this year, and Boulevard in 2013. Anheuser-Busch InBev alone has swallowed four major craft breweries in the last four years. Valuations are sky high: Lagunitas, for example, was assessed at $1 billion.

But you wouldn’t know the market is so hot at Russian River Brewing Co., the Santa Rosa brewery with arguably the greatest cult following in America. The Russian River path has followed exactly the opposite trajectory: Originally owned by a corporation, it now belongs solely to a husband and wife, Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo.

They’re in this to own.

The Cilurzos — he the brewer, she the company’s president — understand why their peers are selling. “Craft beer is in this moment right now,” Natalie says. “It’s like this perfectly ripe fruit and you don’t want to wait another day.”

“If you want to sell, now’s the time to do it,” agrees Vinnie. “The going rate is about $1,000 a barrel.” Russian River Brewing Co., which produces 16,000 barrels annually, could almost certainly get more than that.

Yet they balk at the idea. Just last year, the Cilurzos cobbled together “a few million dollars” (more than 1, less than 10, says Natalie) to buy out the last of their 30-some investors.

The reason the brewery could be so exceptionally valuable is because it occupies a unique position in the world of American craft beer — indeed, in the world of beer, period. Only a handful of beers come close to generating the kind of insanity-driving hype that their winter seasonal, a triple IPA called Pliny the Younger, produces. Thousands of people descend on their Santa Rosa brewpub when it is released every February, camping out in parking lots and waiting in line for days just to get a sip of the explosively hoppy brew.

Theirs are beers that are flipped on the black market; that are held in the back rooms of liquor stores and bars, available only to loyal customers who know a secret password. To say that demand exceeds supply is an understatement.

No one seems more surprised by the brewery’s cult status than the Cilurzos. They wear this type of success uncomfortably. Russian River is less clandestine and its products are proportionally less expensive than counterparts in other realms, like wine’s Screaming Eagle or whiskey’s Pappy Van Winkle. Vinnie has shared recipes for his most coveted beers online. The focus of their business remains on their pub — a modest, no-frills restaurant on a not-very-charming block of Santa Rosa.

What sets the Cilurzos apart, however, is not only their commitment to ownership — they’re not the only ones with an independent brewery — but their pragmatism. Their principles are not unconditional.

To hear the Cilurzos describe craft beer is to hear them describe themselves: Blue collar, approachable, unassuming. That they never sought cult superstardom — and their continued refusal to sell out to a big corporation — makes them perfect for the role of craft beer’s modern heroes.

Roots in a home brew

Vinnie and Natalie met in Temecula (Riverside County) in the late eighties; he was working at his family’s small winery, and she was working at a nearby tasting room. Using the winery equipment at night, Vinnie started home-brewing; Natalie would come over after she got off work, pizza in tow, to help him.

By 1994, when that home-brewing operation became a fully fledged — if small and unprofitable — business called Blind Pig, Vinnie had begun to hone a distinctive style: big, bitter and boozy. Today, that flavor profile could describe the full beer taps lineup at many Bay Area bars. But at the time, few were doing it.

“I was the first in this country to make a double IPA,” Vinnie says. That was the Blind Pig Inaugural Ale, he claims, made to celebrate the brewery’s first anniversary. He made it double because he’d purchased some used brewery equipment of, um, potentially questionable quality. “Taking our regular IPA recipe, I figured I’d double the hops, add some more fermentables to make it a little higher in alcohol — that would at least cover up any weird flavors.”

Dry-hopped for a year, with oak chips — for tannins and ageability — the Inaugural Ale was surprisingly good, though at 90 bittering units, he admits, way too hoppy.

“It was like licking the rust off a tin can,” Vinnie laughs. “So bitter, so astringent.”

Those were scrappy years. Blind Pig was the first brewery in Temecula since Prohibition, and one of only four or five in the greater San Diego area (now one of the most densely concentrated craft beer cities in the world). Much of the beer was brewed in an old military soup pot. Natalie printed labels at Kinko’s and glued them onto bottles herself.

Blind Pig was never a commercial success. “I don’t even remember how you sold all that beer,” Natalie says to Vinnie. But it began to gain a following among San Diego-area beer nerds. Greg Koch, who later founded Stone Brewing Co., was an early fan, stopping in regularly to fill his growlers. (When Stone released its first double IPA, an anniversary ale, it gave Vinnie credit on the back label.)

So when the opportunity arose to take a paid brewing gig with a well-established company, Vinnie jumped at it. In 1997, Korbel, the brandy and “Champagne” behemoth of Sonoma County, decided to open a brewery, largely to furnish draught beer for a new deli on its winery property. Vinnie was hired initially as a consultant; after six weeks, he became the full-time brewer.

Korbel called the operation Russian River Brewing Co.

It was under Korbel’s ownership that Vinnie created the recipes for many of Russian River’s most beloved beers, including Pliny the Elder. That beer — now the flagship of the portfolio, comprising 65 percent of production — was first brewed at the behest of Vic Kralj, owner of the Bistro in Hayward, who in 2000 invited Vinnie to participate in his first-ever “double IPA festival.”

The beer was named in homage to the ancient Roman philosopher, who had written about hops (lupus salictarius, to him) 2,000 years ago.

In 2002, advised by a financial adviser to divest of all non-wine properties, Korbel owner Gary Heck shut down the brewery. Vinnie was laid off. Korbel offered him a winemaking job, but he had a better idea.

“In lieu of severance, I told him I wanted the brand name,” Vinnie says. He walked away with no money, no equipment, no facility. But the Russian River Brewing Co. trademark now belonged to him, in addition to the logo (still used today) and the brand names of six beers, including Pliny the Elder and several barrel-aged sour beers.

The couple raised nearly $1 million from family and friends — “No loans!” Natalie exclaims — to open their brewpub in 2004.

“The pub was a do-over for us,” Vinnie says. “We dropped all the crappy accounts. We used tuliped glasses. We got to do things the way we wanted.”

The Pliny Era begins

Fast forward to February 5, 2010 — the day everything changed.

Vinnie showed up at the brewpub as usual around 7 a.m. — and saw a long line of customers waiting outside. He had no idea why. “I go up to the people in line, and I’m like, ‘Why are you here so early?’ And they’re like, ‘Don’t you know? Your beer is rated No. 2 in the world on RateBeer and Beer Advocate!’”

Vinnie had never heard of either website.

That beer, of course, was Pliny the Younger. Vinnie had first brewed the triple IPA in 2005 as a winter seasonal beer, simply because he found himself with some extra tank space. Named for the nephew of the double IPA’s namesake, Younger was likely the first-ever triple IPA, Vinnie surmises. They’d release it the first week of February and keep serving it in the pub until their anniversary party in April. Since he brewed only a small amount once a year, it took Vinnie a few tries to get to what he calls the sweet spot — intensely hoppy, yet balanced, at 10.25 percent alcohol.

The 2010 release was a perfect storm of well-made beer, good ratings, the advent of social media and a sudden ease of mobile communication among beer enthusiasts.

Hundreds of people flooded the brewery, rabidly consuming as many pints as they could swallow and taking as much beer to go as their four-growler limits would permit. Younger was pouring from just one tap; quickly the staff hooked it up to every tap in the brewery. All 620 gallons of Pliny the Younger sold out in eight hours. Vinnie, who was already feeling under the weather, ended up in the hospital coughing blood.

“It felt dirty,” says Vinnie.

Nothing good came out of that day, they say — except that they were able to buy a new $50,000 tank, in cash.

Russian River has since gotten the Younger release down to a science: on-premise only — no growlers — and when you enter the pub, you get a wristband with three tabs on it, to count your beers. You can stay for only three hours, and you are limited to three glasses. “People love it,” Natalie says. “It keeps the line moving.” They allocate Younger each day over a two-week period, so that they never run out of it. Only Vinnie knows how much that daily allocation is.

“This year, nobody walked away without having Younger,” Natalie says, gleaming with pride.

Indeed, accessibility is what the Cilurzos strive for, and they can’t understand why the market drives such an intense scarcity of their products.

In attempts to meet demand, they have expanded production immensely, from 2,500 barrels in 2004 to 16,000 today. (Younger’s initial 15 barrel production is now 160 barrels, about half of which goes into distribution.) They opened a second production brewery in 2008. They now have 96 employees. Although 68 percent of their production is sold at the pub, they distribute all their beers.

Pliny the Elder is bottled every week. “In my opinion, Pliny is very available,” says Natalie. Yet wholesalers divvy up distributions so that no one gets very much, and many retailers squirrel it away, out of sight. The Cilurzos and their staff now have to show up to accounts unannounced to check on whether their beers are being treated fairly.

If they discover that a shop is hiding Pliny the Elder in the back, requiring customers to spend certain amounts of money before they can get any, they will threaten to cut off supply. “Consumers assume we love the secrecy,” Natalie says. “But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s pretentious, it’s elitist. That’s not what we’re about.”

So the million-dollar question: If the Cilurzos want everyone to be able to get their beers, why not expand production even more?

They say they will — eventually. But they’re currently brewing at 100 percent capacity, and they calculate that their next brewery will cost about $35 million to build. Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

The whole “we didn’t ask for this” routine might make some people roll their eyes. Sure, the Cilurzos didn’t set out to brew the most coveted IPA in the world, but doesn’t the hype help their business all the same? Natalie admits that it probably does but insists, “It’s not by design.”

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine, beer and spirits writer. E-mail: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley