Beer trail 07 · Southern Manitoba, Canada
THENarrow Margin
Steinbach was dry for thirty years. The ban fell by 1.8 points.
- Distance
- ≈ 130 km
- Driving
- Around 2 hours driving · a comfortable day
- Stops
- 4 breweries
A route through southern Manitoba's Mennonite settlement towns — Morden, Winkler, Stanley and Steinbach — where alcohol was restricted within living memory and every brewery on the road has opened since 2021.
Best travelled May – October
The history
Fifty-point-nine to forty-nine-point-one
Steinbach spent thirty years dry. In 2003 the town put it to a referendum, and the ban fell by the narrowest margin imaginable: 50.9 per cent in favour of allowing alcohol to be served in restaurants, 49.1 per cent against.
That vote only permitted alcohol with a meal. A liquor store did not follow until 2008, and then only on a 4–2 council decision. Bars and cocktail lounges were not allowed until 2011.
So a brewery opening in Steinbach in 2021 is ten years downstream of bars becoming legal, and eighteen years downstream of a vote that could have gone the other way on a few dozen ballots.
The same region votes the same way on other questions — Steinbach and Winkler both voted against cannabis retail in 2018. This is not a route through a place that took drinking for granted. Every stop on it is recent, and none of them were inevitable.
The route
Four stops, west to east
Start in Morden, in the Pembina Valley
Rendezvous Brewery & Taproom
Morden · Manitoba
Four beers and a taproom in a town of about nine thousand. Small, and deliberately so.
On the marginOpened 2023 — one of the two newest stops on the route.
≈ 10 km east to Winkler
Heritage Farms Brewing Co.
Winkler · Manitoba
Seven beers and an award already. The name is the thread — this is farm country, and the brewery says so.
On the marginOpened 2023. Winkler, like Steinbach, voted against cannabis retail in 2018 — the same conservative settlement culture that kept the liquor bans in place for decades.
A few minutes into the RM of Stanley
Blumstein Brewing Co.
Stanley · Manitoba
The newest brewery in this archive's Manitoba records. Five beers, rural, and barely open.
On the marginFounded 2025 — twenty-two years after the Steinbach vote, in a rural municipality rather than a town centre.
≈ 110 km east to Steinbach
The Public Brewhouse and Gallery
Steinbach · Manitoba
The point of the route. A brewery, taproom and gallery in the town that voted on whether restaurants could serve a glass of wine — and only just said yes.
On the marginOpened 2021: eighteen years after the referendum, thirteen after the first liquor store, ten after bars were permitted. Each of those was its own fight.
What this page does not knowMorden, Winkler and Stanley sit within about fifteen kilometres of each other; Steinbach is a separate drive of roughly 110 km east, so this is two clusters rather than one continuous route. The referendum dates and margins are from contemporary CBC reporting. The brewery founding years are from this archive's records and Blumstein's 2025 date in particular is very recent — check it is open before you drive.
Tally's Take
Why the margin is the story
Most beer writing treats a taproom as a lifestyle choice. In southern Manitoba it is closer to a civic argument that somebody won.
A 1.8-point margin means the outcome was decided by a few dozen people in a town of thousands. Had it gone the other way, Steinbach would have stayed dry, the liquor store would not have followed in 2008, bars would not have followed in 2011, and there would be no brewery to visit in 2021.
That is worth holding onto, because it cuts against how these routes are usually sold. Nothing about a brewery scene is natural or inevitable. Alberta's exists because a production floor was deleted in 2013. Steinbach's exists because a referendum went one way by under two points.
And the region has not simply liberalised across the board — the same towns voted down cannabis retail in 2018. This is a place making specific decisions, one at a time, not a place that changed its mind.
This page is the story; the passport is the journey. Open the route there to track how much of it you have actually done.
Follow this route in your passport →Guided
Tours on this route
Nobody runs a guided version of this route yet, so it is self-drive.
If you run shuttles, guided tours or designated-driver trips in Calgary, this route is open. We list real, bookable tours here with your booking link — and never a placeholder for one that doesn't exist.
Run a tour on this route →Drink responsiblyThe last leg is a long one on rural highway. Whoever drives it should not be tasting at the first three stops.
The Narrow Margin is open for anchor stops.
Breweries on the route get a full archive profile, a scannable code, and a place in the itinerary. Tourism boards get a packaged route with the traffic tracked end to end.