Out and about in the heart of Belgium

Ben McFarland hits the road in rural Belgium in search of the perfect pint

When a French-speaking Belgian pours himself a beer, chances are it’s brewed in Wallonia.

Earthy, rustic and full of character, Walloon beers truly embody their refreshingly rural and unheard of homeland which occupies the southern half of Belgium.

Wallonia has lived long in the shadow of Flanders, its more ostentatious, cosmopolitan and Flemish-speaking counterpart in the north and word of both its beers and its striking landscape has sadly struggled to reach beyond its borders.

But that may be changing. The year 2005 was officially declared ‘Year of the Beer’ in Wallonia. As an exercise in stating the bleeding obvious, this is surely up there with popes wearing funny hats. Surely every year is beer year in Wallonia?

Well, not quite. The romantic ‘brewtopian’ vision of a thriving artisanal Belgian craft brewing scene has become increasingly fuzzy of late thanks to a number of factors.

Stricter drink-driving laws have reduced the annual beer consumption of the average Belgian to a mere 90 litres, the brewing Goliaths InBev and Alken-Maes have the lion’s share of distribution and the small, brewing Davids rarely have the means or the money to let those beyond a 50 mile radius know about their smashing beers.

While word-of-mouth is all very well, whispering to your mates is hardly a modern marketing strategy on which to build a longterm future.

So, in an effort to champion the region’s lesser-known life-enhancing liquids and introduce them to a wider audience, the ‘Year .....

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By Ben McFarland

Section : Beer Journeys

Page number : 43