MdV:
Merchant du Vin beer e-newsletter – Thursday, March
27, 2008: Beer Idealists
MdV & fine beer in the news:
Fine beer & benchmark imports
continue to gain more attention in the media: Orval, Samuel Smith, Ayinger and
Pinkus are all featured in the March/April '08 issue of Draft magazine; Samuel Smith's Oatmeal
Stout was in Vol II number II of Beeradvocate magazine; Samuel
Smith, Lindemans, and Rochefort were in the March '08 Men's Health magazine; Lindemans
Framboise is in the cover photo of the March '08 All About Beer magazine. We also spotted a photo of
Lindemans Pêche in the Cleveland (OH) Scene on March 12, and Rochefort Trappist
8 was "Beer of the Week" in Stephen Beaumont's Nation's Restaurant News magazine column
of Feb. 25.
A full current news listing is
always on our news page;
you can also check local beer tastings,
dinners and festivals on our national events
page
and read previous html versions of this
newsletter at our
If you are interested in beer
glassware, clothing and collectables we also have an online e-store.
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Beer Chat from the Many beer idealists are brewers and cellar folk who produce beer;
others are the salespeople, bartenders, servers, and retailers that help
bring it to consumers. But the real beer idealists are the beer
drinkers who become attached to flavor and variety in beer, and who put their
time, energy and money into seeking it out. One short generation ago, beer was a pretty much a commodity.
Many will remember that their parents had one brand of beer that they always
bought, usually a golden lager; sometimes it was from a medium-sized regional
brewery, and other times from a huge national or international brewery.
Other than on trips out of the In 1978 Samuel Smith introduced authentic English beer to Nowadays, more and more beer drinkers expect a wide variety of styles
at their local beer spot. They go out to dinner and expect to find a
stout to pair with their shellfish; a perfect all-malt pils
to accompany their salad; a spicy hefeweizen with
their cream soup; a brown ale or pale ale to go with their steak; an imperial
stout or fruit lambic with dessert. They e-mail a beer importer to
request a couple of cases of beer from a tiny German brewery that they
visited in person last month (or they visited eight years ago, but they
remember how great the beer was.) They drive out of their way to shop
at a store with a great selection. Beer idealists want to taste, to
talk about flavor, to try new things, to revisit classics and compare them to
new releases. They want to personally define beer styles, and discover
new styles. For those of us selling fine beer, this is wonderful. Sure, it
means new labels & tap handles, and registering the new labels with the
federal government and with the states that require it. It means presenting
new beers to our wholesale and retail customers. It's a press release,
promotional materials, educating customers, managing growing inventories . .
. and trying to squeeze a new beer into an ever-fuller beer store shelf. But it is what every beer seller hopes for: customers calling and
e-mailing to find beers; restaurants revising their beer menus; and websites
with thousands upon thousands of reviewers that are actual consumers,
reviewing beers on their own time and for no pay, because they want to share
their delight. It's celiac organizations and
organic foods organizations finding great beer for their members. It's beer idealists in In the old days a generation ago, breweries sold massive volumes of
one style. Pubs had one tap . . . or if they had two or three taps,
each probably had the same beer on it. It sure must have been simple to sell
then, but the consumers of the day didn't know what they were Beer sellers today understand that we're still in a transition away
from the "light golden lager brand" model to the "flavor
variety" model. In some beer accounts, and in some parts of the
country more than others, it's still hard to find wide flavor variety.
Because we are still in transition, you don't hear beer sellers at any level
- whether huge or tiny - putting down products sold by someone else: they
know folks have their attachments to beer flavor; they know that the
consumers will not buy a product that is not appealing to them in some way;
they know quality will show . . . and they know the transition to a
fine beer nation, with a variety of beer flavors and styles, will continue. Cheers to that, and thanks to the beer idealist that expects to see
Ayinger Celebrator, Samuel Smith Imperial Stout, Lindemans Cuvée René and Orval at every beer retailer. We'll
keep trying to help make that come true. |
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Merchant