Merchant du Vin Comments on Craft v Crafty as It Applies to Non-US Brewers

We’ve noted much discussion lately about brewery ownership. Privately-owned small breweries are proud of their independence; huge breweries are selling beers that are marketed to appear like they are from a small brewery; from time to time small breweries may think that bigger breweries are "stealing their mojo" by trying to look small; a US brewing trade organization does a fine job of escalating the issue in even more minds. Whether a beer is entitled to be called a "craft beer" has even become a tiny bit controversial.

Merchant du Vin sells Specialty Import Beer, or "beer with a wide range of flavors, based on styles with significant brewing history, from iconic, small, independent, traditional breweries outside the USA." All our Specialty Import Beers come from small breweries that are owned by a family or a monastery. Traditional? The beers in our portfolio have open-topped stone Yorkshire Squares, wild yeast fermentation, decoction mashing, bottle conditioning, eighth-generation brewers, wooden primary fermenters, and even beer deliveries by horse-drawn dray in the brewing town of Tadcaster.

The aromas, flavors, and tactile experience of great beer are a pleasure, a real enhancement to life, but that beer in your glass is more than a pure expression of the brewer’s art. Somebody had to sell that beer to your local bar or store, and then they sold it to you: marketing will always be an immensely important part of the beer business.

A huge brewer making a mass-market import look artisanal or producing a "crafty craft beer" is just trying to sell it. Of course, they are also honestly acknowledging that people want a wider range of flavor in beers: this is essentially a compliment to great brewers, worldwide, that have given beer drinkers so many exciting, wonderful beers. Beer marketers will continue to sell to you, with cool labels, ads, tweets, and newsletters – whether you drink only beers from small independent breweries or from giant multinational breweries. Or whether you care only about flavor . . . or if you identify with a brewer’s lifestyle marketing. A consumer is not wrong when they like a beer, and beer marketing is not a bad thing. The term "craft beer" is not a magic password – it’s just a marketing term, meaningful in different ways to different folks.

No matter how they market it to you, great beer does come from small, independent, traditional American breweries. It sometimes comes from homebrewers, and sometimes from huge breweries.