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Yesterday, USA Today announced that its readers had named The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery as having the nation’s best brewery tour. This came after a month-long campaign in which the brewery went toe-to-toe with industry giants like Magic Hat Brewing Co., Boston Beer Co., Budweiser and several large, national craft breweries.

I think anyone who has taken a tour at The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery — whether at the old location or new — can tell you they offer a great tour. Their guides are always passionate and knowledgeable in describing how the brewery crafts beer in a traditional German way, and the beer speaks for itself.

While The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery looms large here as both the oldest and biggest in the city, they pale in comparison to some of the other nominees with whom they were contending for the title. And that makes the achievement all the more impressive. Consider that Magic Hat Brewing Co., which finished No. 2 in the poll, has 268,237 fans on Facebook. The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, by comparison, has only 15,450. Sam Adams finished fifth, even though their Facebook fans eclipse the one million mark.

But of course, if the brewery has shown us anything it’s that quality trumps quantity. They didn’t need hundreds of thousands of fans to win the poll; they just needed one really passionate community to rally around them, and that’s exactly what happened. Over the course of the last month, fans of the brewery voted every day and encouraged others to do the same. Local papers and news stations also wrote about the poll and shared the link throughout November.

This wasn’t just a win for the brewery, but for everyone that helped put the brewery into the national spotlight. And it’s especially a win for a city that is fast becoming a great craft beer town in its own right.