Oz Clarke's beer odyssey

So many people were impressed by a speech given last year at the Tesco Brewing Innovation Awards by Oz Clarke that they clamoured for a repeat. So here it is, a little late in the day, but as pertinent as ever

I remember the moment I became a wine drinker. It was quarter to two on a Sunday afternoon. I woke up. When I was a student we had built-in alarm clocks on Sundays. 1.45pm. Because the pubs shut at 2pm.

I was on the floor of some strange flat. I looked left. Who are you? We didn't, did we? I looked right and there was this vast, garishly painted canister, twice the size of my head. So I lifted my head and propped my chin on the edge. I gazed down on a brass coloured top, which seemed to have had holes punched in it by a mechanical digger. I lowered my nostrils and inhaled. Ah! The unforgettable smell of cigarette butts soaked in stale beer. The Watneys Party Seven.

And that was the moment I turned to wine. I then spent a considerable time refusing exhortations that Double Diamond worked wonders­ that a pint of Trophy was really a quart. I decided that my right arm would be better employed doing many things other than drinking Courage Tavern keg. And above all, I refused to join the Red Revolution. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro I could lay down my life for. But join the Red Revolution? Never.

But that was what wine drinking had become when I was a student in the '70s. Our great British beer heritage was disappearing down a plughole of sweet fizzy keg, setting the scene nicely for the tide of tasteless fizzy pseudo lager that would love to snuff out our brewing heritage.

Nowadays those of us gathered in this room, those of you involved with the Tesco Brewing Awards as brewers or as judges, are here to make sure it doesn't happen, but it nearly did happen. And were it not for a doughty band of four ale enthusiasts led by Michael Hardman of Young's, and the crusading journalism of Richard Boston, passionately extolling the pleasures of pub and pint, it might have happened. Because the '70s were a terrible time, a frightening time to be a beer drinker who cared about flavour and tradition.

Why did I care so much?

As I realised how precarious our beer world was becoming, I would sometimes drive 50 miles to find the nearest pint of real ale. Some counties of England, Scotland and Wales were entirely devoid of real ale. In a city like Norwich or Nottingham or Newcastle or Glasgow there might only be a couple of outlets in the entire city, or there might be none at all.

But why did I care so much about a tradition I was hardly old enough to have sampled? Well, beer was ingrained in my being, as was flavour, as early as I can remember. I grew up with three different smells in my nostrils: 1) bakers yeast ­ my family have been bakers for 500 years; 2) malt ­ my mother gave us a spoonful of malt everyday before school; 3) Hops ­ I have never ever been able to get the aroma of fresh picked Goldings drying in the oast house out of my nostrils.

And there's more to it, we farmed all our own produce ­ vegetables, chickens, pigs, and even rooks! Everything was natural. Does this make a difference? Yes. Taste memories are founded in childhood. If, kids today just eat junk food and drink junk drinks they'll have a taste vocabulary and taste memory of junk and their aspirations when it comes to eating and drinking as adults will be negligible.

Wine? Not my dad. He drank Tolly, Fremlins, Mackeson, Symonds, and Irish Guinness. Do I remember the flavours? Every one. And their sense of place was drummed into me by my father - and by their flavours.

It wasn't long before I started sneaking out to local pubs. My first furtive pints were Gardners of Ash, Cobbs of Margate, Fremlins of Faversham or Maidstone. And I began to realise how powerful local beer can taste, how specific to a brewery and the area it serves. Thank God I started when I did, because within a few years their breweries were gone. The massacre had begun and the awful spectre of keg world was frighteningly real.

I began a beer odyssey

But after university I became an actor, all over the country. I armed myself with the volume that was an early Good Beer Guide and began a beer odyssey.

The W listings in the 1978 guide took up page 53. In the latest Good Beer Guide the Ws spread from page 770 to 778. And our current guide is three times as big.

And look at what has replaced the Whitbreads, the Watneys and the Wilsons. Thirty two breweries in W alone ­ 29 new. Of the old ones just Wadworth, Wells and Wolves survive. But look at the new ones. Woodfordes of Norfolk ­ one of the first micros to stand up to Watneys and say, enough. Wychwood ­ highly successful and deeply aware of the importance of the sense of place, a sense of belonging for a brewery. And of the others ­ who knows which will become big and successful.

Mr Bass started in his garage and so did Mr Whitbread. Fifty new breweries started in the last year. A report in 1998 recorded that 295 micros had failed since 1973. What it should have said is that 351 were still going strong.

So where do we stand now? At a crossroads, sure. But for once it's up to us to take the right turn. The latest figures show beer down 2.2%; cask from independents up 5.4%; premium bottled beer sales in supermarkets up 15%.

You guys at Tesco should be proud of what you've achieved over the years with your Beer Challenge ­ but the nice thing is, the other guys are doing it too. All the main supermarkets have healthy numbers of bottle-conditioned ales, speciality beers and high quality imports.

It makes you want to weep

Bottled beer can do two things: 1) support local brews that you can stock and promote locally 2) introduce exciting beer from all around the country to people all over the country. And despite the spread of some cask ales far away from where they're brewed, if you're not in the region, a bottled brew may well give you a better feeling for the brewery than a cask ale that's travelled too far.

Lets look at the figures. By the end of this year, independents will be producing more cask ale than national brewers. The casual closure of Newcastle's and Edinburgh's breweries, and Boddington's in Manchester makes you want to weep ­ but it provides an opportunity. People are drinking more cask ale. They need to be supplied. There are hundreds of British breweries prepared to do so.

But for this market to keep on growing, the beers must have character. Ideally they must have local character. Why do people mourn lost brews, grieve at the closing of their brewery? Because beer used to be an integral part of where someone came from, where they lived, what their culture was. Britain is now in a position to recreate that feeling.

But how? Well, the most expensive way to try to sell more beer is by gaudy ad campaigns and relentless give-away promotions that price beer so close to cost it would be illegal in many countries. The cheapest way is to maximise the quality of your ingredients ­ by supporting the good barley producers, maltsters and hop growers, and paying a fair price to all concerned; by emphasising the locality of the beer, whether it's from a South Yorkshire pit village, a reborn Oxfordshire brew house or a venerable brewery that floods every high tide; and by emphasising the men and women who make the beer. Strange to relate ­ Mr Bass was a human being, Mr Whitbread was a human being, Messrs Courage, Worthington, Watney, were human beings. Scottish and Newcastle. No. They were places­ Once.

As brewers you have a massive responsibility. One of the most important things is you must have a vision of flavour. You can't brew great beer without your own vision of flavour ­ not that of some wretched banal focus group or some bone-headed marketing strategists. I always remember my friends in research and development in Whitbread, Luton. They'd brew a dozen trial beers packed with personality ­ and present them to the marketing men, who without exception always chose the least characterful, the least flavoursome to