Washington, D.C. — Amid a littered backdrop of forgotten furnishings and makeshift decor, Bardo stood as a testament to the unconventional in the craft beer scene. In a district known more for its historical monuments than its brewery innovations, Bardo was initially launched as an oddity, pushing the limits of both flavor and decorum since its inception. Its story offers a rich introspection into the ebb and flow of craft beer popularity in America, narrated through one venue’s journey from trendsetting to a nostalgic relic.
The brewery’s original iteration manifested in 1993 under the hands of Bill Stewart, an eccentric entrepreneur who turned a defunct car showroom in Arlington, Virginia, into a makeshift brewpub. Eschewing traditional aesthetic, the venue declared its presence with an audacious installation — a Plymouth Fury protruding from the building’s facade, surrounded by murals and eclectic paraphernalia.
Stewart’s creations, from the Marion Berry Lambic, named with tongue-in-cheek humor after the local mayor, to more traditional brews like ginger beer and barleywine, began to garner interest. Bardo’s distinctive offerings bagged several national awards, suggesting that Stewart’s gamble was paying off. However, the brewery’s early days teemed with near-chaotic zest, not least because of its interesting team, which included figures who were unarguably characters out of a bizarre script.
The struggle was not just internal. By 1999, navigating the labyrinth of America’s alcohol distribution rules led Stewart to relocate brewing operations to rural Rappahannock, Virginia, yet bureaucratic red tape prompted him to leave the U.S. altogether. He ventured into international expansions, none of which matched the spirit or success of the original Bardo.
Several years later, and after a cool reception to less flavorful brews abroad, the call to revive Bardo came, not from Stewart, but from original patrons and newer enthusiasts back in D.C. Bardo was resurrected in 2013 on an unconventional site in Northeast D.C., where it straddled the lines between a beer garden, a sculptural exhibition, and a relic of its earlier self.
Here, despite physical and administrative constraints — like the delay in official permits because the city couldn’t fathom a brewery without walls — Bardo persisted. Yet the beer it crafted in this iteration did not inspire the former glory. Critics and old-timers pointed to the challenges of brewing outdoors, which, while novel, threw up hurdles in quality control and taste consistency.
Relocating yet again to a more upmarket locale near the newly minted baseball stadium brought no better fortunes. The area’s glossy gentrification contrasted starkly with Bardo’s ostensive decay, which seemed more out of place than avant-garde. Beneath the surface of this quirky setup was a business struggling to connect with a community morphing rapidly in tastes and living standards.
In 2021, the lease was bought out by a local restaurant group that rebranded the establishment into a more conventional, if uninspired, tropical beer garden. This marked the end of the quirky Bardo saga.
Still, the legacy of Bardo poses compelling points of reflection. In its prime, Bardo didn’t merely serve beer; it sold an experience — raw, unedited, sometimes unsettling. It was a pioneer in more ways than one, not least for Stewart’s adherence to an inexplicably renegade strategy that disregarded norms for better or worse.
As former Bardo brewmaster Jonathan Reeves, now at Silver Branch Brewing, and his colleague Favio Garcia, at Dynasty Brewing, reminisced recently, the conclusion seemed evident: Bardo was always about pushing boundaries, sometimes at the cost of sustainability. Bill Stewart didn’t just brew beer; he brewed narratives of resistance and defiance, some intoxicating, others too bitter to swallow.
Comparing Bardo’s trajectory to the contemporary craft beer scene, it’s evident that the market has matured, priorities have shifted, and consumers’ palates have diversified. While craft beer continues to grapple with competition from newer alcoholic innovations, the Bardo story remains a reminder of the risks and rewards in daring to defy the mainstream. Fictional or not, there’s a cautionary tale here in the remnants of one eclectic beer garden’s refusal to simply blend in.