Rock Art Brewery: Morrisville's Basement-Born Craft Beer Original

In Morrisville, Vermont, there's a brewery that started in a basement, fought off an energy-drink giant, and became the first brewery in the state to run entirely on sunshine. Rock Art Brewery is one of Vermont's original craft breweries — and one of its most characterful. The tasting room pours flights of bold, unpretentious beer beneath a gallery of local art, the resident rescue dog makes the rounds, and the whole operation hums with the easy confidence of a place that's been doing its own thing for nearly three decades. In a state famous for beer, Rock Art is one of the reasons why. 🍺

The story starts in 1997 in the basement of a house in Johnson, Vermont, where Matt Nadeau — a Vermont native who'd caught the brewing bug watching Colorado's Breckenridge Brewery get off the ground — began turning his homebrewing obsession into a business. He and his wife Renee launched Rock Art at the tail end of the 1990s microbrew bust, when distributors were telling anyone who'd listen that craft beer was done. Undeterred, Matt crammed a 7-barrel brewhouse and eight fermenters into the basement and got to work, developing the kitchen-born recipes that would carry the brewery for decades. In 2001 the operation moved to a larger facility in nearby Morrisville, and in 2011 the Nadeaus built the modern production brewery it calls home today.

Rock Art's most famous chapter came in 2009, when energy-drink maker Monster Energy sent a cease-and-desist letter over the brewery's beloved Vermonster barleywine, claiming the name diluted its "Monster" trademarks. Matt Nadeau decided to fight — and Vermont fought with him. A grassroots, social-media-fueled outcry turned a tiny Morrisville brewery into a national underdog story, and that October the two sides settled, with the Vermonster name intact. It remains one of craft beer's great David-and-Goliath tales, and the beer itself — a 10-percent American barleywine — is still a badge of honor on the tap list.

In 2017, Rock Art became the first brewery in Vermont to run fully on solar power, according to the Vermont Brewers Association: a 200-panel, 67-kilowatt rooftop array installed by Waterbury-based SunCommon that covers most of the brewery's roof and at times generates more electricity than the brewery uses, feeding the surplus back to the grid. The first solar-brewed beer, the Sun Rocked IPA, hit taps that June. For Matt Nadeau it was personal as well as practical — decades earlier, his grandfather had tinkered with water and wind power for his own projects in Johnson. The apple, and the solar panel, didn't fall far from the tree.

The beer lineup leans classic Vermont craft: bold, hoppy, and honest. Flagships include the Ridge Runner amber ale and the American red ale, alongside a rotating cast that has recently featured a Vermont maple wheat ale, a New England IPA, a coconut vanilla porter, a pilsner and a ginger beer. Everything is brewed and canned on site in Morrisville and sold across Vermont. And the Vermonster barleywine still anchors the specialty lineup — order one and you're tasting a piece of craft-beer history.

The tasting room is open daily — currently Monday through Wednesday from 10 to 6, Thursday through Saturday from 10 to 7, and Sunday from 10 to 6 — serving flights, half pours and full pints, with beer to go. Build-your-own flights of 2-ounce pours run a dollar apiece, making it easy and cheap to taste your way across the board. Growler fills are available if you bring your own jug. The room doubles as an art gallery hosting work by around 80 Vermont artists, so there's as much to look at as there is to drink. Hours can shift with the seasons, so check the website before you go.

It's also one of the friendliest rooms in the state. Leashed dogs are welcome on the porch and in the downstairs area, and the brewery's official greeter — Ridge, a four-year-old rescue dog — is usually on duty making friends and supervising the playpen. The snack menu keeps it simple and local: soft pretzels with mustard and a chips-and-salsa basket featuring salsa made in Johnson. It's the kind of unpretentious hospitality that turns a quick tasting into an afternoon.

Rock Art sits in Morrisville, a genuine working Vermont town that has quietly become a craft-beverage hotspot — home to a cluster of breweries, a beloved food co-op, and an arts scene punching well above its weight. It's an easy stop on any northern Vermont beer itinerary, and a worthy destination in its own right for beer pilgrims. The Nadeaus met at Johnson State College just down the road, and the whole enterprise still feels rooted in this valley — local ingredients, local art, local dogs.

What keeps people coming back isn't just the beer, though the beer is excellent. It's the feeling that this is a brewery built by and for its community. The Nadeaus still run the place; the recipes still trace back to a home kitchen in Johnson; the solar panels still spin the meter backward. In a craft-beer world of buyouts and endless trend-chasing, Rock Art is a reminder of what the movement was supposed to be: local, independent, and a little bit scrappy.

Nearly thirty years after two homebrewers started filling bottles in a basement, Rock Art Brewery stands as one of Vermont's craft-beer originals — sun-powered, dog-friendly, and pouring with pride in Morrisville. Stop in for a flight, meet Ridge, take home a four-pack, and raise a glass to the little brewery that stared down a monster and won.