Europe's new beer order is emerging

In Europe, brew masters in traditional breweries are regarded with an awe bordering on reverence.

An almost papal authority is attached to their utterances by those working with them as well as by the drinkers who enjoy their brews.

Invariably, in my experience, this is justified as both their technical and historical knowledge and their feelings for their product are second to none. In addition they have a certain oracular ability.

As a believer in the cult of the European brew master I was greatly impressed by our Josef Tolar's reply when asked in a recent interview about how he saw the future of beer, in the Czech Republic in particular and in Europe in general.

In both cases, Tolar replied that it belonged to the micro and the regional brewery.

Big brewers will find little further scope for expansion in a Europe where their bland products, the creations of mass marketing, are now facing mass rejection.

Small is now good and it's a sign of the times that the only new Czech green-field site brewery to be built in 25 years is a tiny 24,000hl affair with half its capacity already earmarked for export.

I think brewmaster Tolar could be right. Cask-ale sales — essentially an English regional and micro affair — are on

the up and up, whilst their lager-conditioned foreign relatives are, for the most part, holding their own here.

This does lead me to the conclusion that maybe it is time for brewers and retailers to start looking at the real nature of our business in a different way.

Currently Budvar, amongst other genuine imports, is firmly lodged in the stats with the major supra-nationals. While that continues to happen we shall all remain fixated on a thing called "the lager market".

The fact is, however, that the Budvar brewery and its brews have far more in common with topnotch English cask-ale brewers and their products than they do with the major multi-national mega brewers of lager-type products.

To make sure that all of us, who are the true inheritors of the great European beer tradition, whether top or bottom fermenting, are in a position to make the most of the new European beer order that is emerging, we should strip off the old labels

and start talking to each other now.

Tony Jennings is CEO of Budvar UK