- [Narrator] "Birth of the Brews: A History of Dixie Beer" is made possible by the WYES Producers Circle, proud to support locally-produced programs and by viewers like you, thank you.

(light jazz music) - If you were anywhere in the neighborhood, you could smell the hops, you could smell it and you could hear it.

I mean, the assembly line made a noise with the caps, the capping of the bottle, it was a very noisy place, and you knew they were brewing some beer around in those neighborhoods.

- I think the names of the beers were always, they were part of New Orleans.

They were woven into the fabric of New Orleans.

- New Orleans became the southern brewing capital of the world actually.

I mean, we had 30 breweries here.

A lot of beer-drinking going on in New Orleans.

(laughs) - My uncles would always sneak a beer to the kids, and usually was in a small, like a four-ounce glass, and you could sip the foam off the top.

That was like a treat.

(light jazz music) - Driving down Tulane Avenue as a child in the back seat of my parents' car, to me, the dome on Tulane Avenue by Dixie Beer was all I knew.

We never knew that we'd ever have a Superdome, but then fast forward years later, and we had the Superdome.

The dome at the Dixie Brewery and the Superdome are just iconic, very special buildings in this city.

I can't imagine being in New Orleans without either one of those.

(light jazz music) - When you think of Dixie Beer, you think New Orleans, the hometown brew.

I'm Peggy Scott Laborde.

Let's look back.

Just like the city I grew up in, Dixie has a story that's equally colorful.

It begins with German immigrants.

They came to New Orleans in huge numbers in the 1800s bringing their brewing traditions with them and making this the beer capital of the South.

- Oh God, yeah, New Orleans has had over 70 breweries over the course of the history of it.

There was a brewery that was one of the first plantations here.

At most, we've had 15 in the city at once, and we're kinda working on doing that again which is kinda fascinating.

- [Peggy] Most of the names of these early beers faded into history, but old-timers will remember a few favorites.

♪ Hello mellow Jax, little darlin' ♪ ♪ You're the beer for me, yes siree ♪ - [Peggy] There was JAX Beer from the Jackson Brewing Company which opened on Decatur Street in 1890.

Founded by Lawrence Fabacher, its name honored a hero of the city, General Andrew Jackson.

- I can recall there was an old, colorful guy in my neighborhood.

He used to be a JAX drinker, and he would not order JAX.

He'd walk into the bar, said give me a man on a horse.

Of course you had to be a bartender to understand what that meant.

If you look at a JAX beer, there's a man on a horse.

- [Peggy] In the 1950s and 60s, JAX believed strongly in the power of advertising.

Its TV commercials included a series of cartoons created by the comedy team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May.

- Bartender, bartender, give me a glass of JAX beer, the beer with the real beer taste, never heavy, never harsh.

It's premium brew from 100% natural ingredients.

- Yes ma'am, coming right up.

- Bartender.

- Yes ma'am?

- Bartender, are you making fun of me?

- No ma'am, I wouldn't do that.

I wouldn't make fun of you.

- Then why are you talking that way?

- I talk this way, I wouldn't make fun of you.

- Really?

- Here is your glass of JAX beer with that real beer taste.

- Sir?

- Hmm?

- I wonder if I could have a glass of JAX beer, the mellow, bright, clear, light beer?

- Yes, ma'am, coming right up.

Here it is, a glass of JAX beer with JAX's real beer taste.

- Bartender?

- Yes ma'am?

- Bartender, I thought you said you weren't making fun of me.

You were too making fun of me.

- I was not, I was not making fun of you.

I was making fun of her.

- [Peggy] Today, you can't go far without finding JAX Beer memorabilia.

- JAX was just unbelievable.

You name anything, JAX had their name on it.

The purchasing agent that handled this for JAX, he told me, he said they spend about, out of a dollar's worth of profit, 50 cents of every dollar goes to advertising.

- [Peggy] But it was more than just merchandise that spread the JAX name.

In the early days of television, they sponsored WDSU forecasts for Nash Roberts and sport casts from Mel Leavitt.

(upbeat big band music) ♪ Hey everybody, let's jump and jive ♪ ♪ Stop acting dead 'cause we alive ♪ ♪ Let's drink JAX Beer, drink JAX Beer ♪ ♪ Good JAX Beer, good JAX Beer ♪ Hello mellow JAX best beer in town ♪ - [Peggy] Rhythm and blues pioneer Dave Bartholomew sang about JAX Beer, and the brewery sponsored radio shows from Vernon Winslow who, as Dr. Daddy-O, was the city's first African-American disc jockey.

♪ JAX, best beer in town - [Peggy] The Jackson Brewing Company also sponsored sports and entertainment shows from this early radio star and even gave her her stage name, Jill Jackson.

♪ It was Regal all around, all around, all around ♪ ♪ The smoothest brew in town ♪ Let's Regal - [Peggy] What about a beer brewed on Bourbon?

Regal Beer was made by the American Brewing Company whose brewery was located on Bourbon Street from the 1880s until 1962.

Falstaff was a national brand that came here in the 30s.

Its Gravier Street brewery lit up the scene for more than 40 years, just like its neon sign and illuminated ball which, beginning in 1952, forecasted the weather.

- I remember my mom and dad had a card in the glove compartment of the car, and they would refer to that to make sure the color of the ball indicated certain weather conditions.

- And if you were really a true-blue New Orleanian, you knew what the colors meant.

There was red and green and white.

One meant the storm warnings, the weather was about to change or it was about to go up or down.

Green generally meant you were gonna have a nice, pleasant evening.

- And it was visible because you could see from all parts of the city 'cause it was on a tower, perched on a high tower, where everyone could see it.

- [Peggy] For many people growing up in New Orleans, a city that knows how to party, meant getting an early education in beer-drinking.

- My dad and all my uncles, his brothers, were beer-drinkers, and of course, we'd go to the camps on Haynes Boulevard in the summertime, and there was always beer bottles everywhere, and usually Falstaff and Regal.

Of course, every neighborhood had a corner bar as well as a grocery store and a church, so my dad and his brothers would frequent the bar rooms.

Well bars, the bar rooms they called 'em.

So yeah, we, my family has a deep history in consumption of beer.

(laughs) - Well I started drinking beer before I was supposed to, and I got the taste of Dixie in '45 when it was still around and also Regal, so I did those two for sure.

Wasn't really a JAX Beer man too much, and Falstaff, I drank Falstaff, too.

- I remember drinking a lot of Falstaff beer, especially for the Bicentennial, Falstaff came out with a Bicentennial can, and some buddies of mine went to Biloxi that weekend to celebrate our 200th anniversary of our country's birth, and they set out to drink 200 Falstaffs in commemoration.

Well they drank 200 Falstaffs in about the first eight hours, so they bought another 100 and figured well, we won't be here for the 300th, so we'll do that, we'll consume 100 more.

- [Peggy] By the late 1970s, Falstaff, JAX, and Regal were all gone, and just one local beer was left: Dixie.

It was founded just after the turn of the 20th century by Valentine Merz who had earlier success in the restaurant business and as a beer distributor.

He opened Dixie on Halloween day 1907.

It's Tulane Avenue brewery filled an entire block and became an anchor in the Mid-City neighborhood for decades.

- The building was fantastic.

Again, it was seven, eight floors, and it was brick, and it had a big, ornate, round window right above my office which is fantastic to look at on Tulane Avenue, and on the very top was a dome that had four sides with neon-lit Dixie Beer, and it also had a crow's nest with a flag, and we'd have to go up there and change that flag, and that was pretty scary to do.

- [Peggy] The brewery became an integral part of the neighborhood, and the city supported Dixie even during hard times.

When prohibition in the 1920s stopped beer sales, Dixie sold ice, soft drinks, and even ice cream under the name Dixo.

It was the first brewery in the South to get back in business when prohibition ended in 1933.

By 1938, it had introduced a new beer, Dixie 45.

Why the name?

The prevailing legend gives credit for the name to Nick's Big Train Bar, a popular watering hole once located across the street from Dixie brewery.

- Searle Manegra was the president and the major shareholder of Dixie Brewery, and I was talking to him one day over at Dixie.

I asked him, Mr. Manegra, how did Dixie 45 get the name, and Searle thought a minute and he said, "Robert, I was over at Nick Castro Giovanni's bar room "right across the street from my office, "and Nick and I were having a beer, "and Nick looks up at me and he says, "'Searle, your beer's got a kick like a Colt .45.'"

Mr. Manegra said, "Nick you're right, "I think I'm gonna put that on the label," and he went back and he did it.

- [Peggy] It may be a good story, but some remain skeptical.

- I think that the 45 was actually already established.

When Valentine Merz opened the company, his marketing strategy was not only to make Dixie Beer, but a whole lot of other things, so his marketing strategy was to have 45 different brands of product.

- I always thought, my opinion was because it was 4.5% alcohol.

I'm not sure that was the alcohol content of Dixie Beer, and I also heard the Dixie was brewing 45 different beers for 45 different beer companies.

- [Peggy] Whatever the origin of the name, Dixie 45 Beer remained popular for years.

- It had in New Orleans what you call a New Orleans flavor.

It was just a robust, I don't wanna use the word strong, but it just had a full, rounded taste and flavor.

It just went perfect with seasoned bar seafood or even fried seafood, just seafood, and being a seafood city, this is what Dixie was trying to do.

- [Peggy] Memories of beer and seafood also bring to mind the trays that advertised the local beers and became a popular platter to eat boiled seafood on.

- We had actually some at the camp on Haynes Boulevard.

I don't know how we wound up getting 'em.

Consuming seafood in New Orleans usually was given to you on a beer tray.

- Crabs and crawfish were always eaten on those trays.

It was amazing 'cause I would look at it, even as a young girl, I wanted to see everything perfect, and I would see those pretty trays come in, and they'd put crabs and crawfish on it, and I would just be don't put that on there.

(laughs) I didn't wanna mess 'em up.

- [Peggy] From the 1940s through the 1960s, Dixie Doodles were another truly interactive marketing campaign.

Newspaper readers were encouraged to send in puns and slogans featuring the Dixie name for a chance to win a savings bond.

- The idea was to get a lot of the local people, the New Orleanians, interested in drawing a cartoon kind of thing.

I used to draw like little stick people, and whoever had, they would have a little contest, and whoever would have the most unique or the people at Dixie would vote in this to see who was best.

It would get shown and put in the Dixie Rodo or in the newspaper.

The drawing had to have something about Dixie in it.

It was a good marketing gimmick.

- [Peggy] In the 1970s, Dixie recruited a beloved New Orleans notable, clarinetist Pete Fountain, to help sell beer.

He had a family connection.

- This is the Dixie Brewing Company, and that's my dad Red on the left and my son Kevin.

I'm the guy in the middle with the bald head, Pete Fountain.

- Oh that's when I retire there.

Counting on this one here.

Look at that, ain't that pretty?

Now he wasn't playing the music, he was just holding that thing up to his mouth.

(Pete laughing) - Had Red drove here for 35 years, so most of the time, I worked with him.

Well I started playing music really because of the brewery.

Working over here with dad, the cases were so heavy that I figured my clarinet was a lot lighter.

- Well he was a good little helper.

- [Pete] Dixie, that's my beer.

- That is the best, it's pure.

- All right, here you go buddy.

- Beautiful - How about that?

- Isn't that beautiful?

- You blue-eyed devil, you.

- Ooo, bald head.

(Pete laughing) - [Peggy] As competition from national beers grew in the 1970s and other local breweries closed, Dixie played up its longevity.

- [Narrator] Hometown, a good word that makes you think about a lot of good things.

Good friends, good places, good things to eat, and good, cold Dixie Beer.

Hometown.

As a matter of fact here in Louisiana and Mississippi, Dixie is the only hometown brewery left, and there were some seven hometowners less than 35 years ago.

Remember Four-X, Regal, Lucky Lager, and now even JAX, but Dixie Beer is still going strong.

The folks who own Dixie Beer who work here, who live here and support our community, well, we're all hometowners, and as long as you keep telling us to, we'll keep brewing our beer for folks who like to call our part of the country their hometown, too and love to enjoy a wonderfully-pure, perfectly-natural beer made by the very last of our hometown breweries.

The one that would rather be best than biggest, Dixie Beer.

- [Peggy] Dixie may have been small, but it had a big thing going for it.

As one New Orleanian put it, when you picked up a Dixie, you weren't only drinking a beer, but a city.

It was part of life here for decades, but that doesn't mean Dixie hasn't been put to the test.

In the 1970s, there was an infamous bad batch of beer, a foul-tasting product that nearly closed the brewery.

- They had done the floors from what I understand over in the brewery, they had to redo them, and the phenol fumes from the flooring process got into the beer vats.

- [Peggy] Once they determined the source of the problem, Dixie made changes and began brewing again and tried to do what it could to salvage its reputation, including giving away free beer.

- I do remember a Dixie truck coming down the street 'cause I was outside washing my car, waxing my car for a date that night, and my grandfather was sitting on the porch, and I looked and I said look, there's a Dixie beer truck.

People are jumping off of it bringing six-packs to people's doors.

Well he came up to us, and I walked over to him, and he handed me a six-pack.

They were trying to get people to try Dixie again.

They lost a tremendous amount of business.

- [Peggy] Dixie also struggled in the 1970s and 80s when out-of-town brews became more popular.

For many years, the company stayed in business by brewing store brands for two other iconic names.

The Katz and Besthoff Drug Stores, known as K&B, and Schwegmann Brothers giant supermarkets.

Dixie brewed for them under the name Royal Brewing Company.

Dixie tried everything it could to stay afloat with various owners, but in the 1980s, was forced to declare bankruptcy.

It looked like Dixie's last days until new owners, Kendra and Joseph Bruno, stepped in to save it.

They bought the brewery in 1985.

- It was an unexpected adventure.

Somebody had to do it.

Nobody was standing in line, nobody was there, and we were in for a penny, in for a pound.

We took it on.

- [Peggy] In the 1900s, Kendra Bruno's grandparents brought another iconic brand, Barq's Root Beer, to Louisiana, but when she and her husband purchased Dixie, they had no experience in the beer business.

- Joseph and I didn't set out to be brewers.

We set out to rescue and save an intrinsic part of New Orleans.

It's in our DNA, we needed to save it, and that was our job.

- [Peggy] The Bruno's saved Dixie and even introduced new beers, including Blackened Voodoo.

In the early 1990s, Dixie made national headlines when the malt beer was banned in Texas for allegedly promoting witchcraft and the occult.

- That was the singular best thing that ever happened to Dixie Brewery in its entire history because when it was banned in Texas, our state legislators just jumped right in there and threatened to ban Lone Star in Louisiana, so they did actually take us off the shelf, and we went round and round, long enough for us to get phone calls from all over the world, begging for Blackened Voodoo.

It pretty much saved Dixie in the beginning.

- [Peggy] As they worked to revive the brewery, the Bruno's had a dedicated staff working with them, but remember, they were located in a 1907 building.

- In the 80s, we had a very old brewery, and a lot of it was hands-on, dragging a lot of hoses.

We had no automation, or very minimum automation, at the time, so it was a tough brewery to work around.

- [Peggy] The look of the brewery at that time is preserved in the 1984 movie "Tightrope."

In the film, which is set in New Orleans, Clint Eastwood plays a New Orleans police detective whose search for a serial killer brings him to Dixie Brewery.

(machinery humming) (bottles clanking) Even the beer that had survived bankruptcy, prohibition, and business challenges, could not match Hurricane Katrina.

The flood of 2005 put almost nine feet of water inside the brewery, but Dixie wasn't done.

The Bruno's contracted with a craft brewery in Wisconsin to brew the beer there, but it wasn't home, so it's fitting that the next chapter of the Dixie story involves a hometown hero, New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Tom Benson and his wife Gayle.

- You know, Tom and I both grew up in New Orleans, and we both grew up with our parents drinking Dixie Beer, and of course Tom liked to tell the story that he started drinking Dixie when he was 16, but of course it was illegal, but he would wink about that, but my dad drank it, and my family drank it.

We just grew up with it.

Growing up in New Orleans, that was what you did.

We had heard that the Bruno's were thinking about selling.

They weren't positive, but they were thinking about it, and while they were thinking, they were talking to other people, and the Bruno's came in to meet us, and of course, after they met Tom, they fell in love with him and decided to sell it to us.

You know, it was such an iconic brand, and Tom was more interested, and so was I, more interested in bringing that back.

- [Peggy] To celebrate the purchase in 2017, the Benson's joined the Bruno's for a toast at another local institution, Parkway Bakery.

- Yeah, that was really fabulous.

You know, I've met all kinds of people throughout my career being here at Parkway.

I've met presidents, but when I heard Tom Benson was coming here to re-launch Dixie Beer, I was like man, and we were gonna give the first draft handle.

It was amazing, it was absolutely amazing.

So Tom would come here, drink that Dixie Beer, and he'd eat a corned beef po-boy with creole mustard and pickle only, and I remember when he was leaving.

He was walking out the front door, he said, "I'm just an old New Orleans boy done well, "and I'm bringing Dixie Beer back, "and she ain't going nowhere."

God bless him with all the things he could do with the New Orleans Saints, he brought them back, and he wanted to do one more thing that touched his heart that he remembered when he was a boy, and it was Dixie Beer, and it needed to come back because it was dying.

It needed to come back.

It was brewed in Wisconsin.

All the locals knew it, and bringing it back just flooded the city with a different kind of hope.

- [Peggy] In buying Dixie, the Benson's weren't just saving a brand.

They were ready to bring things to a new level.

Brewing the beer in New Orleans was a priority.

They set out to find a place, not only to make beer, but also to put down roots as strong as the ones at the old Tulane Avenue brewery.

With an eye on the future, they didn't forget their past.

At Dixie's new brewery in Eastern New Orleans, restored neon signs from the original building and even the Dixie dome design from Tulane Avenue have found a new home, and most importantly, for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, Dixie is being brewed in New Orleans.

- Bringing back a brand like this to New Orleans is the opportunity essentially to bring back something that everyone grew up with, a name and a brand that's associated with so many good things over the years, and to bring production back to New Orleans East here really is an opportunity for us to reintroduce this brand in a part of town that hasn't benefited to the same extent of the economical development that's taken place elsewhere, so we're really excited about what we can do here with Dixie and also in New Orleans East.

- [Peggy] A mini museum on the second floor of the brewery pays tribute to Dixie's past and highlights the history of other local brands.

- [Jim] In our museum, you'll see New Orleans brewery memorabilia going back over a century.

It includes neons, crab trays, bottles, cans, signage, you name it.

You can almost picture yourself at the turn of the century or 1950, what is must have been like to purchase a beer in New Orleans.

- [Peggy] A new, state-of-the-art brewing facility also means the chance to innovate and bring Dixie into the burgeoning local craft beer scene.

- [Jim] Dixie actually has two breweries under one roof here.

We have a Hunter-Bell production system, and we have a 15-barrel craft system.

The craft system is where we can innovate and test new ingredients or flavors or new styles and things that we haven't even thought about experimenting with.

So craft for Dixie is gonna be a process of elimination, trying to figure out what the customers want from us where we can curate that environment here in the retail space.

- I hope that when people arrive here at the brewery, it's obvious the attention to detail and quality that we have, and from their first sip, it's obvious that the beer's to the highest quality and gives them the best experience they can have.

- [Peggy] That experience has been designed to pair Dixie's past with the present, offering places for people of all ages to make new memories and relive old ones.

- When you walk in, you feel like you're walking into another place, like you were on Tulane Avenue because it's like a step into time.

We have the original bar from the Tulane original building, and it has a space for parties and events, and there's a big area for playgrounds and kids to have fun, so it's more of a family-oriented atmosphere.

- [Peggy] And the men and women who work here are family, too.

They're doing their part to revive a New Orleans icon.

- Dixie Beer coming back to New Orleans I think is wonderful.

My grandfather used to work for Dixie Beer, and as a child, I remember him going to work, coming home, and he used to always talk about the brewery, and he loved it on Tulane Avenue.

- It's great to have Dixie back.

I love working here.

I'm glad I got the opportunity to come back.

I can't believe it took so long to get it brewed back in New Orleans, but we're brewing it again in New Orleans, it's fantastic.

- [Peggy] While Dixie has a new home in New Orleans East, the site of its former brewery on Tulane Avenue is part of the Veterans Affairs medical center complex.

The Falstaff brewery closed in 1974.

It's former location is now an apartment complex.

A restored neon sign and weather ball still light up the night sky.

In the 1980s, JAX Brewery on Decatur Street was converted into a retail and residential space, and the site of the former Regal Brewery on Bourbon Street is now the Royal Sinesta Hotel.

When it comes to those local beers, only Dixie survives.

- The people of New Orleans kept this brewery going.

Their loyalty to Dixie, their dedication, and it's really funny because whether you loved Dixie Beer or you didn't, you knew it, and you could talk about it, but nobody else could.

It's part of the fabric of New Orleans.

It's who we are.

I think we all have it in our veins.

- Dixie's part of the soul of this city.

The identity is there, it fits, and I think New Orleans without Dixie in it is just wrong.

It's as wrong as say palm trees in the arctic.

It's just wrong.

It needs to be here, and we need to have it.

At least I do.

(pleasant jazz music) - [Narrator] "Birth of the Brews: A History of Dixie Beer" is made possible by the WYES Producers Circle, proud to support locally-produced programs, and by viewers like you, thank you.