The headline across the bottom of Details magazine caught my eye today at Borders.
“Artisanal America: How Handmade and Homegrown Became the New Consumer Religion.” The story itself is even online. Sure enough, the cute timeline that runs above the story has a picture of beers from Anchor Brewing and a note that in 1965 the brewery helped “kickoff the microbrew craze.”
(See, not everybody uses the term craft beer.)
What’s troubling, and a reminder why I’m not part of Details’ target audience, is that most of the items mentioned in the story turn out to be expensive. (It’s hard to continue reading after the reporter asks this question: “Does the phrase ‘Horween Tracker bone suede upper’ mean anything to you?”)
This story equates artisanal with luxury and exclusivity. Which is not the way to build a better beer culture.
They may have gotten confused thinking microbrews or craft beers are more expensive than the run of the mill Coors, Miller, Busch, etc… which means they must be for people who live luxuriously.
The thing I love about craft beer is for 1.5 times the price, I can get 300 times the flavor over the aforementioned beers. And when it is compared to other things considered Luxurious it is far less on an once by ounce scale than say something like Whisky.
Though I am not saying there are not beers out there aimed at the Luxury market, if there is one thing I’ve learned from being a consumer, there is a luxury market for anything.
Aren’t you doing the same thing in reverse (…with all due respect)? If I said I had my doors made by an artisan, my beer made by an artisan, my socks made by an artisan would I have not consistently been saying expensive? Was it ever not so? Isn’t the idea that craft beer is artisanal not also saying the same thing? I am not sure, come to think of it, that I heard the word artisan associated with beer before the great leap forward in pricing a few years back (along with the introduction of the cult of personality).
Doesn’t it (in its application if not by definition) really mean pricey?
Alan – I think there is a difference between costing a measure more and expensive/exclusive. For instance, we have a gate made by a man who lives up the hill, an artisan I guess, who does wordworking on the side. It costs about 10 percent more than we’d pay for a gate at Home Depot.
I’m pretty sure I saw the word artisanal used in describing New Albion beers (at the time the brewery existed). Of course they were also pricey at 95 cents to $1.05 for a 10-ounce bottle. That equates to $1.20 for 12 ounces, which accounting for inflation would be $3.80 or so for a bottle today.
Before the Industrial Revolution, wasn’t everything handmade? Maybe not always artisanal, but those who made inferior products or did inferior work probably didn’t have long carriers. Although the Industrial Revolution started in the UK, the US seems, particularly since the war (the world war), to have embraced industrialisation to a degree not seen elsewhere. Certainly, microbreweries are a reaction to that, just as Starbucks, Ben & Jerrys, etc. reacted to industrialised products in their fields.
I agree with Stan that equating artisanal and luxury is incorrect, but probably because of small scale production or simply because they can, these “rebel” (i.e., non-industrial) products cost more.
It is kind of amusing that in some fields (beer, for one), the industrial companies are now trying to also capture the artisanal market by pretending they are not really that big.
Merriam-Webster defines “artisan” as “one that produces something in limited quantities often using traditional methods.” As Alan suggests, the wares of such individuals are almost always going to be more expensive simple due to the limiting methods of production. Luxury, though? That’s a matter of opinion.
If I buy a Louis Vuiton suitcase, it is going to be by almost anyone’s definition a luxury product. Will it be made by the hand of some Italian artisan? No, it will be made by factory workers in china or elsewhere, and in fact, the Italian artisan’s equivalent may even cost less.
If I buy a tailor-made, hand-stitched leather jacket, however, it will also almost certainly qualify as a luxury good, although one which will also more then likely qualify as an artisanal good.
Now, if I buy a bottle of Liberty Ale or Jolly Pumpkin La Roja, either will cost more than, say, a bottle of Bud. The Liberty, however, will be made in batches smaller than those of Budweiser, but still large enough to be available nation-wide, while the La Roja will have been transferred for aging to wooden barrels and thus necessarily produced in much more limited quantities. Are either or both artisanal? Depends on your definition of “traditional,” I suppose, since Anchor does make use of modern methods like flash pasteurization. Are they luxury? Almost certainly for La Roja, which retails for a good deal more than either Bud or Liberty, and possibly for Liberty, which must seem like an occasional luxury to someone who is working minimum wage and struggling to support a family.
Seems to me, then, that it all depends on perspective. Oh, and so far as the craft/micro thing goes, my personal experience is that more people still use micro than use craft, especially in the media.
While I agree completely that it is not good for beer culture (or any culture) to have artisanal = expensive, I think we shouldn’t look past where this article was published. DETAILS has little concern over progressing any cultural movement, preferring to simply serve up drivel loosely disguised as insider information that will ensure you are hipper, richer and more frequently laid than the next guy. The result is that they, and others of their ilk, forgo any actual insight that goes beyond sticker price, or what can be boiled down to a top ten list (or in the case of the article in question “20 ARTISANAL TERMS YOU NEED TO KNOW” – because only a rube isn’t able to talk about the dovetail joints on his coffee table).
That being said, the readers of this magazine most likely don’t actually care how something is made in the first place, which is what I, and presumably you, link very closely with the term artisanal. They care about learning the latest buzzwords, so they can use them in their everyday mad-lib-style conversations “Check out my (every day item), it’s made of (exotic material) and cost me (incredibly large number) dollars.” And for those people, DETAILS is giving them exactly what they want.
/rant
Rare and expensive releases, overpriced imports, five-course craft beer dinners with long and lurid descriptions of every pairing, high-end restaurants carrying craft beers and charging a premium for them… Stan, don’t you catch a whiff of luxury and exclusivity in these trends?
Meanwhile, artisanal is fine in French or Spanish but comes across as high-falutin’ in American.
I forgot I posted a comment about this. Been that sort of week.
I don’t think Liberty or La Roja is actually expensive even if they are not cheap. La Roja as, bought at the brewery, it is 8 bucks a big bottle or so. Less than Moody Blue or other fizzy cheap sparkling wine. The beer, by comparison, is both artisanal and great value. JPs beer is more expensive in shops the further you get from Dexter MI but that is artisan + trucking costs (+ taxation I suppose). I would even be interested at the cost of the Liberty (from the LCBO) and La Roja (from the store) in my stash per ml.
Maybe I was wrong. But maybe by “pricey” I mean a 100-1000% premium. “Lurid descriptions” always imply “FIO”
But if I lived in Dexter, I would be drinking JP beers as lawn mowing relief not as a flaunt of wealth but as recognition that local + artisanal = affordable beauty.
More & More people are attracted towards Homegrown, Wonder why ?
Might be more & more people are getting attracted towards organic Beer.