Two tasty tales appeared in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. The first concerned Anheuser-Busch's sponsorship of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Selling beer to Germans should be as easy as a penalty kick, but AB discovered that trying to slip Budweiser past Germany's beer defenders raised many a yellow card:
Anheuser-Busch Cos. has exclusive rights to sell and market its beer at soccer's World Cup, which will be held in cities around Germany for a month beginning June 9.
Being the official beer sponsor of the world's most-watched sporting event should give the company an ideal chance to promote its brand and to associate itself with the one thing Germans love almost as much as beer, soccer.
But the King of Beers has a king-size problem: Germans hate the beer and Anheuser-Busch can't even use the Budweiser name in Germany. In a country where brews are hand-crafted and richly flavored, many drinkers dismiss Bud as light, mass-produced and weak.
"We don't want Bud at our World Cup," says Johannes Schnitter, a 25-year-old student at the Freie Universität in Berlin, who has set up an anti-Bud Web site, BudOut.de. "I'm not anti-American. This is just the worst beer you could imagine."
Not much wiggle room there.
Anheuser-Busch executives in St. Louis, Mo., realized they had a problem in late 2004. German newspapers were reporting that beer fans were furious about the prospect of drinking the American brew at the tournament.
You gotta admire a people who get "furious" about being forced to drink inferior beer. I've been there myself, but usually just bite my tongue and swallowed my outrage (and whatever tasteless brew I was being served).
In recent years this hasn't been as much of a problem, with more and more venues offering a choice of beers, including selections from the higher end. In a few cases, I've even been able to enjoy a little schadenfreude listening to the whining from Bud and Miller drinkers when the only beer available is of the microbrew variety. This was the scenario that played out at the beer garden at this year's Pond Hockey Tournament on Lake Calhoun, where the only beer to be had was Summit Pale Ale.
The ultimate example of this was when the Nihilist In Golf Pants got married (sorry to crush your dreams ladies) some years ago. The only beer that was made available to guests gratis at the reception was a couple of kegs of Summit India Pale Ale. Not only did he go with a microbrew, he went with one of the more hoppier, flavor-filled ones available. Needless to say, a sizable contigent of beer swillers in attendance were none too pleased with his selection. Which was probably the #1 motivating factor behind his choice in the first place. The man lives for schadenfreude.
The folks at AB were smart enough to realize that trying to cram their beer down German throats was not a good PR move and found a solution.
So Anheuser officials undertook an unprecedented act of beer diplomacy. Tony Ponturo, Anheuser-Busch vice president of global media and sports marketing and the executive who signed the World Cup sponsorship deal, flew to Bitburger's offices in the small town of Bitburg to discuss a deal.
He proposed letting Bitburger sell its beer along with Bud at the stadiums and at some promotional events. In return, the American company would gain the right to use the name Bud, instead of just Anheuser-Busch, on billboards along the fields -- and visible to viewers watching on TV at home.
Bitburger said yes. "For us, this is a way to make the brand Bitburger more popular," says Dietmar Henle, a spokesman for Bitburger Brauerei Th. Simon GmbH, the brewer.
"We could be bullies," Mr. Ponturo says. "But that's probably not smart."
Under the agreement, the name Anheuser-Busch -- not Budweiser -- will appear on key chains and hats given away at events. The company has printed a bar guide to direct people to bars that sell its beer. At the stadiums, drinkers who buy the beer will receive commemorative plastic cups with the World Cup logo next to the words: Anheuser-Busch. Bitburger will be sold in unbranded plastic cups.
I believe it is peace in our time.
The Germans drink more beer than people in the U.S. and nearly anywhere else in Europe, but there are so many beers that none holds a large share of the market, according to the German Brewers' Association, a trade group.
Imports tend to struggle because of Germany's beer purity law, known as the Reinheitsgebot, which dates back to 1516 and decreed that beer could contain only four ingredients: barley, yeast, hops and water.
Although the rule was struck down in 1987 by the European Union, which judged that it breached European law by restricting trade, it is still regarded as an article of faith by German brewers and their customers. Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser contains rice, as well as the traditional ingredients.
Rice in beer is just wrong as the German beer drinkers well know. The good news is, that despite their distaste for Bud, at least some of them know that good American beers do exist.
"Some of the American beer is quite good, including the microbreweries," says Franz Maget, the chairman of the Social Democrats political party in Bavaria, an area known for its beer. "I don't enjoy the large brands like Budweiser and Miller Light. They're too thin."
Exactly. One aspect of the story that you have to love is that the dedication of the German soccer fans is being rewarded. The dedication to drinking at all costs.
One recent Saturday, in the trendy Berlin neighborhood of Mitte, soccer fans crowded into the FC Magnet bar to watch Bayern München vs. Bremen on the big screen and to drink beer -- German beer.
Sipping an Erdinger wheat beer, Philipp Schrenk, a 36-year-old events manager, says he has tickets to see Spain play Ukraine in the World Cup. "The one drink connected to football is beer," he says. Thinking he had had no choice, he said he'd probably drink Bud during the game. "But it just feels wrong," he says.
When he found out that Bitburger would also be sold, Mr. Schrenk was relieved. "That's great," he says. "Now I will surely stick to the country and have a Bitburger."
And, even though it's far from one of my favorite German beers, come World Cup time, I'll raise a Bitburger in honor of German soccer fans myself.
The second story is Eric Felten's vision of the perfect bar, Blair's Blue Room:
The Blue Room's bartenders actually know their drinks. Not only can they recall the difference between a Rob Roy (two parts scotch to one part sweet vermouth) and a Thistle cocktail (equal parts scotch and sweet vermouth), but they can deliver them, reliably distinct from each other, time and again. Their trick for making precision drinks is the simplest and most obvious one -- measuring.
Next time you're out at a bar, take note of whether the bartenders measure properly or just pour away. Most eyeball the liquor as it goes straight into the shaker. The latter looks more professional -- like a chef who knows his ingredients so well that he can grab and toss a smidge of this and a pinch of that. It looks more generous too: Measuring each ingredient can be misperceived as being stingy with the cheer. But meting out the spirits in exact amounts makes for better drinks.
As New Orleans bartender Chris McMillian once told me, "Mixing drinks is more like baking than cooking -- having the exact proportions is the difference between success and failure." "Trader" Vic Bergeron was adamant: "My best advice is to make every drink as though it were to be the best you've ever made," he wrote in his 1947 Bartenders Guide, "and you can't do this if you don't measure."
I don't know where Blair's Blue Room keeps all its glasses, but they come in an inexhaustible variety of sizes and shapes, each suited to a particular drink. Ask for a fizz or a sour, and it is served in a proper Delmonico glass, a little bigger than a highball glass and slightly wider at the top than the bottom. Bigger still is the bar's Collins glass, and it also has the tall narrow cousin used for Zombies. There are silver cups for juleps and I've even seen them dig out a copper mug for a Moscow Mule.
The one glass the Blue Room doesn't have is what is now universally known as a Martini glass -- the stemmed glass with the conical bowl. Martinis at Blair's Blue Room come in the bar's standard cocktail glasses, curved like old champagne saucers, though with a slight flare at the lip. I like not only their glasses, but also that when you ask for a Martini, none of the waiters or bartenders would think to ask "vodka or gin?" Not that they are opposed to making Vodkatinis. It's just that they realize a Martini is a drink of gin and vermouth.
Amen. A Martini is made with gin. End of story. And Felten's point about the proper glass for the proper drink is well taken. He also includes two recipes:
Thistle
1½ oz Scotch whisky
1½ oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon peel.
Rob Roy
2 oz Scotch whisky
1 oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon peel
I'm enjoying a Rob Ray as I scribble this post. Unfortunately, Blair's Blue Room exists only in the fantasy world of Eric Felten's mind. Until we can all find our own real world Blue Rooms, the next best thing may be our own basement bars. Just remember to measure.
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