Selvedge Brewing wins Best of Show; 3 other Ale Trail breweries win medals at the 2026 Virginia Craft Beer Cup
The Virginia Craft Brewers Guild awarded Selvedge Brewing's Baptiste the Gold Medal for Best of Show, the highest honor at the Virginia Craft Beer Cup. It's the second time in five years that a brewery on the Ale Trail has won Best of Show – Decipher Brewing won it in 2022 with its Barley Late Kölsch.
Baptiste is a Bavarian-style Pilsner. From the Selvedge website:
Our Bavarian-style Pils with Weyermann Specialty Malts’ Pilsner malt and hopped it with boatloads of Tettnang Tettnanger and Hallertau Mittelfrüh. We fermented Batiste super cold with a classic German lager strain and spunded the tank near the end of fermentation for 100% natural carbonation. This Pils then rested in one of our horizontal lagering tanks for nine weeks, allowing the delicate hop and malt flavors to come into balance and for the beer to really come alive.
Other Ale Trail winners include:
- Decipher won Gold in the Pale Ale category for 109 E. Pale Ale and Silver in the Porter category for Porta.
- SuperFly won Gold in the Porter category for Midnight Train and Gold in the British Bitters category for Testify.
- Rockfish won Silver for its Hefeweizen in the American Wheat/German Weiss & Rye category.
You can view all of the winners at virginiacraftbrewers.org/the-virginia-craft-brewers-guild-announces-winners-of-the-2026-virginia-craft-beer-cup.
