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| Pendock Unfiltered - Of Brits and beer |
| 14 January 2005 by Neil Pendock |
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| Our columnist considers the rise and rise of Australian lager and wine in the United Kingdom. |
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Even more impressive than Australia?s position as vintner to the UK, is the dominance of Aussie lager in British pubs. At one stage, the Football Association even negotiated with Fosters to sponsor the FA cup, the Holy Grail of British lad culture.
The UK?s love affair with Aussie wine was always a no-brainer, with Milton-Keynes Merlot still a few decades off (assuming global warming continues). But ale had been brewed by the Celts before the Roman invasion and the traditional pint of bitter had been an institution ever since. The story of how Aussie lagers like Castlemaine XXXX invaded Britain and put to flight centuries of terroir-driven drafts is told by Pete Brown in his riotous 'sociable history of beer' Man Walks into a Pub (Pan, 2003).
And what a blitzkrieg it was: in 1980, lager had around 1/3 of the market. A decade later, it was over half. The rise and rise of lager could form a case-study for the new wine business management programme being offered at the University of Cape Town Graduate Business School in conjunction with the University of Adelaide. Brown identifies several factors:
· The rise of Indian restaurants as the most popular dining-out option in the UK called for a cold and refreshing beverage to match the spicy cuisine (this is surely an opportunity for the new-wave Gewürztraminers and Rieslings from producers such as Jack and Knox, Paul Cluver and Thelema);
· A run of good summers saw a decrease in consumption of bitter which is typically served at room temperature;
· The advent of budget airlines and the rise of foreign travel exposed more consumers to lager which is the dominant beverage served on the Mediterranean littoral and the Far East;
· Globalization and the rise of monster multinationals saw the number of brands available in the UK halve from 3000 in 1996 to less than 1500, a decade later, placing small producers under serious pressure;
· Huge ad-spend on global brands by multinational drinks companies who saturated the UK market with witty advertisements and promotional campaigns, with Paul Hogan, later to be reincarnated as Crocodile Dundee, perhaps the best example.
In the early eighties, the UK was in the grip of an undeclared class war, with the miners? strike the best known battle. Bitter was the traditional drink of the working classes and Margaret Thatcher?s conservative government raised duties on beer by 90% between 1978 and 1982 (and doubled it again by 1986), while VAT was hiked from 8 to 15% leading to a retail price rise of 80% at the same time as duties on wine, the competition, were slashed. In a contracting market, lager, the new kid on the block and nimble on its feet, weathered the changed business environment better than bitter did.
Economic and lifestyle factors had such an impact that by the turn of the millennium and for the first time in history, wine consumption in the UK exceeded that of beer. And in the same way that Aussie brands dominated the lager vanguard, so too did the global wine brands from Down Under make all the running in the changed environment of the UK theme pub.
British bitter would probably be in even worse shape if not for CAMRA ? the Campaign for Real Ale, a rag tag bunch of activists who agitated on behalf of barrel conditioned ales and traditional bitters. Brown reckons that bitter would be in even better shape if the CAMRA-istas weren?t such anoraks: 'bearded, beer-bellied, wear chunky-knit sweaters or tight, stained T-shirts, are pedantic, Luddite, and have trouble relating to girls.'
SA has a proud tradition as a nation of beer drinkers and it?s a source of national pride that SA Breweries is the second largest brewer in the world. Local wine producers have a lot to learn from their brewing compatriots when a bottle of Pilsner Urquell, arguably the finest larger in the world and brewed in the Czech Republic, is available for R12 a bottle in a Rosebank restaurant ? far cheaper than Cape wine. And bottled with a crown cork, there?s no chance of cork taint. |
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