Oscar Wong Laid the Groundwork for Asheville’s Craft Beer Community

Imagining Asheville, North Carolina, without craft beer is like trying to picture Orlando without Walt Disney World or Las Vegas without its casinos. But there was a time just a few decades ago when Asheville was not Beer City USA. In fact, no brewery had opened in the quiet mountain town since Prohibition ended. Oscar Wong changed all that. A quarter century after he founded Highland Brewing in 1994, brewing had become the second-largest manufacturing employer in western North Carolina.

“To go from a tiny brewery in a basement of a historic building, brewing on repurposed dairy equipment, to becoming, in less than 30 years, the second-largest manufacturing sector in the area, that’s in large part due to Oscar,” says Anne Fitten Glenn, an Asheville-based journalist and the author of two books about North Carolina beer history.

[Oscar] Wong couldn’t have foreseen that he’d usher in a golden age of craft brewing in his city…

Wong couldn’t have foreseen that he’d usher in a golden age of craft brewing in his city, become a leader in the Southeast’s beer scene, and establish himself as the godfather of an entire generation of Asheville food and beverage artisans. Humble and self-effacing, he still shrugs off the enormity of his contributions to the community. “When I was about 11, my mother said to me, ‘You’re fairly bright; you’re very lazy; but by God you’re lucky.’ I’ve run that lucky thing all my life,” Wong jokes.

Now 82 years old, Wong has gradually stepped back from a day-to-day operations role at the brewery—handing the reins to his daughter, Leah Wong Ashburn, who is now CEO and president. And he’s finally in a position to enjoy the accolades that he’s earned. (Ashburn says that after decades of hard work, today her dad finally posts up at the Highland Brewing bar on Fridays and holds court with a group of friends.) Not only has Wong made his mark on the region’s beer industry, but he’s served in countless community leadership roles, from the Rotary Club of Asheville to the board of the University of North Carolina Asheville.

In May, Governor Roy Cooper awarded Wong the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest honor granted by the governor to people who have shown extraordinary service to the state. A 2-by-2-foot plaque celebrating Wong was installed outside Barley’s Taproom & Pizzeria, which houses the basement where Wong founded Highland Brewing. That same month, he was also honored by the Daniel Boone Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which celebrated him at its Distinguished Citizen Award Dinner. “This kind of recognition is over the top for me,” Wong says. “I’m honored and humbled at the same time.”

Wong’s humility—which easily veers into self-effacement—is a hallmark of his personality. Recalling his life in the early 1990s before founding Highland, he refers to himself as a “washed-up old engineer” who was, at the time, “sitting on his butt” and looking for an outlet. Wong’s daughter says a brewery was a natural amalgam of her father’s creativity, scientific and operational knowledge, and knack for bringing people together through food and drink in service of a larger purpose. “It wasn’t just a brewery,” Ashburn says. “The brewery was clearly going to be about being a good servant to the community.”

Today, Highland Brewing sells its beer in four states and is one of the largest independent craft breweries born in North Carolina.

Today, Highland Brewing sells its beer in four states and is one of the largest independent craft breweries born in North Carolina. Under Ashburn’s leadership, the 40-acre brewery complex continues to evolve as a community-building destination with a disc golf course and volleyball courts. Glenn says that while other breweries followed Highland’s lead and opened in the late 1990s in Asheville, none have adapted and survived as long as it has. “It’s really important to see someone who’s had that ongoing persistence in making the brewery better,” Glenn says. “For a family-owned business that has stayed family-owned and independent, longevity and consistency are important.”

It wasn’t always a given that Highland Brewing would pass to Wong’s daughter. In fact, she’d established a career in the entirely unrelated field of yearbook publishing and didn’t initially express interest in running the brewery. But, in typical fashion, Wong had patience and trust in others that eventually gave Ashburn the confidence to step into leadership at the family business. “He never told me that I had to do it,” she recalls. “That’s really important in our relationship, because I tend to shy away from things that I’m told to do.”

Even once she began working for the brewery, Ashburn says her father was far from a micromanager. He let her make her own decisions—and sometimes her own mistakes. An initial attempt that she made to revamp some of Highland’s packaging didn’t hit the mark, and the designs had to be redone. But her dad remained positive through the experience. “After the fact, we said: ‘Uh oh, that was a goof, and it’s okay,’” Wong says of the redesign. “I’ve always felt that you really don’t learn from success. When it works, you say, ‘Oh it works.’ But when you stub your toe, you learn.”

Wong says the three tenets on which he built Highland’s reputation are quality, integrity, and respect.

Most people would find it nearly untenable to work alongside their families. But for Ashburn—whose husband, Brock Ashburn, is Highland Brewing’s vice president of facilities—the company culture that her father built helps keep all employees united and professional. (She says it’s perhaps “weird” that she calls her dad “Dad” at the brewery. But wouldn’t it be more weird if she called him Oscar?) Wong says the three tenets on which he built Highland’s reputation are quality, integrity, and respect. The first two came naturally. The latter is one that needs to be remade each day, with each employee, in every interaction.

“We’ve demonstrated that, and Leah and I feel strongly about respect. That permeates our culture here in that we might disagree, but we’re going to be respectful about it,” Wong says. “Employees who are no longer here and have moved on keep in touch. They always come back to visit, even the ones that we asked to leave. That tells me we’ve dealt with them respectfully, and they accept that.”

One detail of the business-and-personal-life overlap that the Wong family does find challenging is the degree of recognizability and acclaim that they’ve earned in Asheville. Glenn confirms this, calling Wong “more of an A-list celebrity in Asheville than [ fellow resident] Andie McDowell.” As a Chinese American, Wong also stands out among the beer industry’s still predominantly white faces. And his daughter says that even her identity as “vaguely ethnic and female” makes her memorable within the beer scene. In 2021—the most recent year for which data is available—the Brewers Association trade group reported that 2 percent of craft brewery owners were Asian; 23.7 percent were female.

Besides being local celebrities, there’s also the temptation to work—constantly. Ashburn says that when much of your family works for a local business, it’s nearly impossible to turn off that portion of your brain when you’re out to dinner or even running errands. She’s been known to pop into a grocery store on a weekend morning to buy eggs, only to start checking that Highland’s cans were properly stocked on the beer shelf. “Thank God I’ve gotten away from that,” she laughs.

“… I feel good about giving back, because it satisfies something within me.”—Oscar Wong

But for Wong, his family, his work, and his community have always been intertwined. Asked to define community, he begins at home with his wife, Anna, and his daughters Leah and Nicole. “It starts with family. If you have an intact family you can have stuff to give,” Wong says. “I’ve gotten more than I’ve given because when we connect with people … you gain so much from hearing where people are coming from and what their thoughts are. It has enriched me and I feel good about giving back, because it satisfies something within me.”

This is perhaps Wong’s greatest legacy: as a listener and as a connector of people. Whether he was sharing tips with another bootstrapping brewery in the late 1990s, helping launch the Asheville Brewers Alliance in 2009, or sitting on the board of a community organization a decade later, Wong has always been a central spoke in a grateful wheel of Asheville residents, brewers, and community leaders. No one could argue that the world is richer for his humble and gracious leadership. “I’ve seen this again and again in terms of hismentorship of other local brewers,” Glenn says. “He wants to hear other people’s stories.”