Cream of where?

Closing Boddingtons is yet another move that will undermine beer's image, says Adam Withrington.

Perhaps with a sense of inevitability, Interbrew announced last week that it would be closing the Boddingtons brewery in Manchester. The brewery, next to Strangeways prison, is a major part of the city's cultural and social history.

Even today the big brewery chimney, with its large illuminated lettering, dominates the Manchester skyline.

The closure of the home of Boddingtons - known as "the cream of Manchester" - has predictably led to outrage in the city and the wider cask ale 'community'. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) said it will "fight tooth and nail" to save the brewery while the Transport and General Workers Union said the decision is based on "corporate greed".

Interbrew has stressed that it will continue to produce the cask version of Boddingtons in Manchester, by contracting it out to Hydes Brewery. However, all this does is highlight how far sales of cask Boddingtons - the original, authentic form according to ale enthusiasts - have fallen, with cask now only accounting for 10 per cent of the brand's production.

The situation is ironic. Only three months ago the Manchester branch of CAMRA gave Interbrew a special award for the work it had done on Boddingtons in the previous year. In August last year, with sales nose-diving, Interbrew decided to increase the ABV and tweak the recipe (for example, changing some of the hops used). And Boddingtons drinkers were very happy with the results.

However, it was a last chance for the brewery that has clearly failed to have sufficient impact. Interbrew says keeping the brewery open simply isn't viable. Steve Cahillane, chief executive of Interbrew UK, said last week: "It's not sustainable to continue brewing non-cask ales at Boddingtons and transport them to other brewery sites for packaging when we have the production capacity available at our breweries."

This makes sense for Interbrew. As with other recent cask ale relocations, such as Ruddles' move to the Greene King brewery and the recent re-creation of Brakspear's "double drop" system by Refresh UK at its Witney brewery, Interbrew deserves some credit for trying to preserve the authenticity of cask Boddies in its home city, albeit at another brewery. However, in the longer term it is easy to see why enthusiasts of authentic beer - a definition which doesn't just apply to ale - so strongly resist any move which cuts a beer off from its regional roots. Boddingtons and Manchester are inextricably linked in drinkers' minds, a view both Interbrew and its predecessor Whitbread have, until now, strongly nurtured in their marketing. That alone makes it harder to drum up sympathy for the current situation.

A huge volume of column inches has been dedicated to the subject of beer quality and a big gripe that many brewers have is that the image of wine in the UK is so much better than the image of beer. Well, would whole swathes of Bordeaux wine producers move away from Bordeaux to produce the same wine in a different area of France simply because it made economic sense?

Probably not. Heritage and tradition count for a huge amount in the wine-producing regions of France. A wine from a particular château is a source of great pride for its community and is central to local culture. Stopping production and shifting the grapes and winemakers 100 miles up the road simply isn't an option.

In an interview two days before the Boddingtons announcement was made, Colin Pedrick, managing director for the on-trade at Interbrew, was asked if Bass would be staying in Burton-on-Trent. He said: "I think it's really important that any brand has a particular set of credentials around it and Bass and Burton seem to go together." Interbrew recognises that a beer and its heritage are an important double act. So the question is, can Boddingtons survive the break-up?

The fight to save Boddingtons​

• 1989​ - Boddingtons Action Group loses its fight to prevent the takeover of the brewery and brand by Whitbread
• 2000​ - Interbrew takes over Whitbread breweries
• 2002​ - Interbrew announces plans to close the Strangeways brewery and move production outside Manchester. The Manchester Evening News launches a campaign to save it and joins up with union bosses to hand in a petition at Interbrew headquarters in Belgium
• October 2002​ - Brewery employees go to Brussels to fight the plans, which are
  eventually dropped
• September 2004​ - Interbrew announces it will be closing the Strangeways Brewery, with production of Boddingtons draughtflow moving to Preston, South Wales and Glasgow. Cask ale production will remain in Manchester, but at Hydes.

The Publican says:​

Brewing experts can recreate any beer anywhere in the world, so perhaps being in Manchester isn't important any more from the point of view of taste or quality. But with authentic beers it acts as a huge point of difference and is often the reason why people buy it. For Boddingtons, regional identity is closely tied to the brand.

Can the image of cask ale ever be improved in the UK if it's seen as something that can be bartered with, compromised, and bound by the straitjacket of economics?

Closing a brewery that's central to the tradition of one of Britain's great cities because it's not making money makes commercial sense, but what does it say about our respect for our unique national beer style?