6620 Gordon Road #H
Wilmington, NC 28411
910-793-5299
E-mail: info@luminawine.com
Website: http://www.luminawine.com
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 A.M.–6 P.M.
Owner and brewmaster: Dave Hursey
Opened: 2011
Regular beer lineup: Munich-Style Helles, Bohemian Pilsner, Kellerbier, Porter, Summer Ale, Hirsch Jager Autumn Brown Ale, Scottish Ale, Raccoon Red Ale, Marzen
Lumina Winery & Brewery, located in a little strip of businesses in Wilmington, is the state’s only combination winery and brewery. It’s a tiny storefront with a wide selection to satisfy a range of tastes. Lumina carries everything from Green Apple Riesling and Blueberry Syrah (made with 100 percent North Carolina blueberries) to German-style lagers and English porters.
Dave Hursey is a native Wilmingtonian who worked on the city’s police force for many years until an injury forced him to retire. That gave him the freedom to pursue other dreams. He had been making wine at home since 1999 and beer since around 2001. In fact, he had explored the possibility of opening a winery while on the police force, but that was considered a conflict of interest.
Lumina Winery & Brewery in Wilmington
Hursey opened Lumina in 2005 in a tiny warehouse space in an industrial zone—one of the few spaces he could find that met the city’s zoning requirements. It was only later that he was able to move to a more public storefront, and it was early 2011 when he added beer to his portfolio.
He decided to incorporate beer into the winery as a way to diversify his income. “I like beer better than wine,” he says, “and I saw a statistic a few years back that said that 33 percent more people drink beer than wine, so I felt like it was a good way to differentiate myself.”
Hursey has no formal training in brewing—“just Charlie Papazian’s book,” he jokes. He thinks some people try to make brewing harder than it is. “I’ve been to breweries in Germany, and I’ve talked to brewmasters to see how they do things,” he says. “It’s all pretty basic.”
Lumina focuses primarily on German-style lagers. Hursey credits the time he spent in Bavaria for his brewery’s forte. “It’s where I really fell in love with beer,” he says. He makes his Bohemian Pilsner with 100 percent floor-malted pilsner malt. His favorite is the traditional German-style Marzen he brewed in March and lagered until his brewery’s Oktoberfest celebration in September. “I made another batch close to the date of the party, and you could really tell the difference between the ones that had been lagered all summer and the fresh ones,” he recalls. “It was remarkable. The true Marzens tasted so much better.”
In the front of Lumina’s retail shop, among racks and racks of its wine, patrons will also find homebrewing supplies—yet another way Hursey has found to diversify. He sells area hobbyists ingredients, equipment, and beer and wine kits—including kits of some of the beers and wines he makes himself.
The wine selection at Lumina Winery & Brewery
Taps stand in front of wine tanks at Lumina Winery & Brewery.
Lumina is unrecognizable to anybody looking for a large commercial brewery. In a storeroom behind the tall tanks that hold Lumina’s wine, Hursey brews on a small three-kettle setup that makes about 10 gallons of beer at a time using electric submersion heaters, since he has no way of venting propane. His fermenters are plastic buckets and “BetterBottles”—equipment many homebrewers use. His fermentation and lagering are managed by a pair of chest freezers with external temperature controllers.
That doesn’t stop him from making professional-grade beer, and a lot of it. Hursey says he normally has about 50 to 70 gallons of beer either fermenting or lagering at any one time. While it’s a great deal of work, he doesn’t mind. “Beer is my passion,” he says. “Wine just pays the bills.”