Message 22/28
Date: 06-Nov-10 @ 04:22 PM Edit: 06-Nov-10 | 04:30 PM -
RE: catch 22
... and the czech brew comes by its name honestly being brewed in Budejovice a.k.a. Budweis.
The story goes something like this... in the 1800s, a couple German ex-pat brewers living in St. Louis, Eberhard Anheuser and Adophus Busch, were looking at different ways of brewing, and on a trip back to the old country became interested in the "pilsner" lagering techniques being used in what was then called Bohemia -- Plsn, Budweis, etc. --, adapted those techniques and thought Budweiser was a marketable sounding brand name for the result. Apparently they were right. Soon the brand was outselling the beers of the Germans who had set up their breweries in Milwaukee.
In the '90s, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the Czech Bud started becoming available in the west and Anheuser-Busch began suing all over the world to claim exclusive use of the name. They won some, they lost some. Thus, Budvar in the US bearing the label Czechvar.
More recently, due to the economic policies of a different Bush (minus the "c") and the resulting weakened dollar, Eberhard's and Adolphus' descendants (their children married) lost the company in a stock buy-up by InBev, makers of Stella Artois, Beck's, Hoegarden, etc.
The music club where I run sound is less than a mile from the main Anheuser-Busch brewery, yet now carries no AB-InBev products. Ha!