03.11.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS
“I am STILL not the Diversity Police”: Some thoughts on the Division of Labor in Activism and Advocacy in Craft Beer.
When J. Nikol Jackson-Beckman nailed her core values to the Twitter wall last month I did one of those low whistles you save for when you are really impressed. This post is the extended version. There’s a lot to take in, and I suggest reading it more than once. Should you not remember, Dr. J is, among many things, the Brewers Association diversity ambassador.
Related to “prioritizing the development of mutually workable solutions” there is this: The Activist Introducing Intersectionality to Hospitality. Brewpubs and brewery taprooms are clearly part of the hospitality industry, and “inequality is built into the structure of the hospitality industry.”
Widmer Brothers’ Slow Descent.
The descent doesn’t look all that slow from here. Jeff Alworth writes that when he began the research for The Widmer Way (official publication date: March 26) the brewery sold 175,000 barrels of beer. After declining 20 percent 2018 it, sales dipped to less than 100,000. To be clear, Widmer doesn’t look to be going in the way of BridgePort Brewing. Still, not a pretty looking trendline. (More here on Craft Brew Alliance’s fourth quarter report.)
World Book Day: Why is reading in the pub so enjoyable? In praise of a very British pastime.
Here you’ll find support for the “case that reading in pubs is a British institution. The bond between literature and pubs is time-honoured. Countless books and pubs across the UK celebrate their common history, from Compton Mackenzie’s novel Whisky Galore gently parodying Hebridean islanders’ fondness for a good dram, all the way down to Broadstairs highlighting Charles Dickens’s affection for its Kentish coastline in two separate museums, a week-long Dickens festival, and, inevitably, a pub.”
This is true in the United States as well. Just one example. When the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle, Wash., celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1984 the bar sponsored a bathroom graffiti contest as part of the celebration. The winning entry read “Some nights the wolves are silent and the moon howls.” Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac all drank there. Later Ken Kesey stopped in. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Theodore Roethke was a regular and celebrated his 1954 Pulitzer for poetry there. Novelist Tom Robbins was another regular, and reportedly once tried to place a phone call from the Blue Moon to artist Pablo Picasso in Spain. Robbins captured the essence of the Moon as well as anyone can in a sentence when he called it “a frenzy of distorted joy spinning just outside the reach of bourgeois horrors.”
Youthquake.
The number of posts and newspaper articles about a letter in CAMRA’s What’s Brewing complaining the organization was in danger of becoming a “pensioners’ drinking club” suggest the cultural importance of the discussion. As do the comments at The Pub Curmudgeon.
Why Wild Does Not Mean Sour.
Ah, yes, mixed culture fermentation. “There’s a lot of science and discipline that goes into breaking the rules.”
Celebrities Aren’t Becoming Brewers Because We, the People, Want to Believe Beer Is Ours.
“Celebrities aren’t brewing beer because it doesn’t have the cash or cachet of wine and spirits. The thing is, consumers aren’t particularly thirsty for celebrity-brewed beer, either. We, the drinking public, want to believe beer belongs to us.”
WINE
Why are sommeliers so influential?
“Today’s sommelier is a brand in their own right. They almost certainly have a sizeable socal media following – a key requirement when applying for a new job – and a blog in which they can tell the world about their latest discoveries.” And in Japan buyers at gobbling up forged sommelier badges.
FROM TWITTER
East London. pic.twitter.com/J1D6IsgCzV
— Boak and Bailey (@BoakandBailey) March 9, 2019
MORE LINKS
ReadBeer, every day.
Alan McLeod, most Thursdays.
Good Beer Hunting’s Read Look Drink, most Fridays.
Boak & Bailey, most Saturdays.