The Roseneck Brewing Company from Richmond, Virginia was never a large scale brewery. Originally called the Richmond Brewery and located at Leigh Street and Hermitage Road, the brewery was in business from 1897 until prohibition ended their run in 1918 as it was approaching hard and fast. Run by Alfred von Nickish Rosenegk, the brewery had a decent run, but never approached a dominating market presence. Could it have been the unusual name whereby the owner changed his own last names spelling to be more “American” sounding, or was it the fact that they had a beer called champagne as this lithograph clearly states? Not many breweries of that era called themselves a champagne beer, although later as marketing became more interesting the “champagne of beers” was used by none other than the monster brewery in Milwaukee called the Miller Brewing Company.
Regardless of the reason for the use of champagne as their beer product (along with Hygeia which was another one of their better sellers), the champagne beer never really took off, hence, I can only speculate the reason for the end of the Roseneck Brewery two years before prohibition actually took effect. Needless to say, Alfred von Nickish Rosenegk had a decent run in Richmond, and as a result, we have some nice breweriana like this lithograph still to remember the company by.