Drink in styles
More and more people are taking the Eurostar train to Belgium to sample its beers at first hand. So how do you make sense of its many styles? Lewis Eckett reports
How did it happen? When did it all go right for Belgium’s beer makers? When did the beer world Cinderella get to go to the ball, dressed to the nines, leaving the sneers of ugly sister France in its wake? And no longer care about the jibes about being boring and the fact that they serve frites with everything?
No point in asking the French – they’re still smarting about the fact that their little and divided neighbour could excel over them at anything even vaguely to do with food and drink.
But of all nations the French should understand how trends can be turned on their head. After all, they have their own sporting equivalent. Hard to believe now, but 25 years ago, the French didn’t have a football team. Now they’re world beaters.
The simple answer to the Belgian question is of course that they’ve had the beer for generations. They just didn’t have a Max Clifford style public relations guru to tell the world about it.
While Interbrew and its flagship export brand Stella Artois was making waves across the world, the smaller brewers, the countless bars and cafes, and Belgium’s dedicated beer drinkers quite simply either didn’t know they were enjoying world class products or didn’t care.
Too busy quaffing fine fruity and feisty brews to worry about what anyone else thought.
Belgium’s meteoric rise to the very top of the beer league was on slow-burn for many years, with enthusiasts discovering them years ago. But it took first Michael Jackson and then Tim Webb, both author.....
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By Lewis Eckett
Section : International Focus
Page number : 20
