Craft Beer, Wine and Fine Dining All Live in Harmony at Asheville’s Wicked WeedFor a town of fewer than 100,000 people, Asheville, North Carolina, is punching far above its weight when it comes to food and drink. It’s difficult to walk down the street without stumbling upon some award-winning eatery, and with over 50 breweries in the city, you’ll find more craft beer per capita than just about anywhere else in the country. But craft beer and fine dining not only coexisting, but working in tandem with one another — even collaborating with shared ingredients, fermentation techniques and menu pairings — is a much rarer occurrence. That you’ll find pretty much exclusively at Wicked Weed Brewing and Cultura, the brewery’s James Beard-nominated restaurant. Since opening their original brewpub back in 2012, Wicked Weed — which is well-loved by craft beer fans for its Pernicious IPA and its extensive portfolio of sour beers — has expanded beyond just beer, pushing the boundaries of what a brewery is capable of by moving into cider, launching Vīdl, a line of natural wines, and offering diners a high-end tasting menu centered entirely around fermented ingredients at Cultura. “Why do we do it? ‘Cause nobody told us we couldn’t,” co-founder Walt Dickinson said. “And it just seemed like the next thing to do. We wanted to just keep pushing ourselves to see what we were capable of.” | 