Southern Brewing & Winemaking Credit: Southern Brewing & Winemaking/Facebook

In a long, summer where local restaurants and bars are seemingly dropping left and right, Southern Brewing & Winemaking is now the latest to call it quits. 

Owners Brian and Kelly Fenstermacher posted a farewell note on social media yesterday, thanking patrons for their business and announcing that it’s simply “time to retire.”

“Every great chapter eventually reaches its final page, and ours has been an incredible one,” reads the post. “After three decades in the brewing industry, we’ve decided it’s time to retire. In the coming weeks, Southern Brewing & Winemaking will close its doors.”

Located at 4500 N Nebraska Ave, the homebrew supply store first opened in 2008, and in 2011, the Fenstermacher’s debuted the full-scale brewery, winery, and taproom. 

In a 2014 interview with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Brian detailed how he got his start in Atlanta and later at Tampa’s first homegrown microbrewery, Ybor City Brewing Company, and eventually landed on a business model providing home brewing supplies with a brewery attached. 

“I have no aspirations of getting bigger than we are,” said Brian. “Just getting better at what we do.”

Over the years, the evolving space in Seminole Heights became a popular neighborhood gathering place, as well as a great spot to sip on a beer while you wait for your tacos at Rene’s across the street. 

Southern did not give a specific date for the pending closure, other than a general time frame of “approximately four to six weeks from now.”

The closure comes as dozens of Tampa Bay breweries, bars and restaurants have closed over the last several months, citing everything from a tanking economy, rising inflation, ongoing hurricane recovery costs, changes in drinking patterns, and even GLP-1 weight loss medications.

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This article appears in July 09 – 15, 2026.

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