© 2025 Blue Ridge Public Radio
Blue Ridge Mountains banner background
Your source for information and inspiration in Western North Carolina.
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Craft Beer Is A Family Business: Meet Leah Wong Ashburn

WUNC | By Frank Stasio,
Charlie Shelton
Published October 19, 2015 at 11:50 AM EDT

Meet Highland Brewing Company President Leah Wong Ashburn

Leah Wong Ashburn has been around beer all her life.

Her father Oscar Wong is considered the "godfather" of craft beer culture in western North Carolina. In 1994, he founded Highland Brewing Company, the first legal brewer in Asheville since Prohibition. Today, Highland is the largest homegrown craft brewery in North Carolina.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Leah Wong Ashburn about Highland as a family business and the growing number of women working in a flourishing craft beer market. 

John Warner caught this moment on top of the brewery where he shot a team toast to Highland's title as Best All-Around Brewery in Asheville's Mountain Express weekly. A rooftop bar will open here in spring 2016.
John Warner / John Warner Photography
/
John Warner Photography
John Warner caught this moment on top of the brewery where he shot a team toast to Highland's title as Best All-Around Brewery in Asheville's Mountain Express weekly. A rooftop bar will open here in spring 2016.

Copyright 2015 North Carolina Public Radio
Frank Stasio
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
See stories by Frank Stasio
Charlie Shelton