Sam Adams Brews Succession Plan

Boston Beer chair's wife is set to inherit founder's controlling stake in company

- LAURA COOPER

For years, when someone asked Samuel Adams founder Jim Koch what his succession plan was, he would quip: "Don't die."

Now the chairman of Boston Beer is 75. His company's sales are falling. And his answer has changed.

Koch says his wife, Cynthia Fisher, a healthcare entrepreneur and Boston Beer board member, will inherit his controlling interest in the company.

"Sam Adams was a brewer and a patriot," says Fisher, who joined the brewer's board in 2012. "You can look at me as the alewife."

Fisher, who is 63, has been married to Koch for more than 30 years. They have two children together, including a daughter who works as a Boston Beer sales representative in New Orleans. Koch has two other children from a previous marriage.

Koch and Fisher met on a blind date. She told him: "You won't believe this, but I just had your beer in my bathtub." The night before, Fisher had hosted a party in her apartment in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, where she had filled a bathtub with ice and Sam Adams lager.