Especially for Wine-geeks.)

In the wide spectrum of taste, beer, as a class of beverages, offers more different and specific tastes than wine does. You can find spicier, fruitier, fuller, stranger, more explicit, even wilder tastes in beer than in wine.

There are 2 main reasons for that. First, you can brew beer from any type of grain, and second, during the brewing of the beer, you can introduce spices, herbs and even fruit in several phases of the brewing process.

If you understand this simple truth, you understand why it is so much more fun, and so much more adventurous to match food with beer, instead of wine. The richness of all the different styles and tastes of beer, makes beer the ideal companion to go with your meal. For every dish there are plenty of good and different beers to go with it. Several new young chefs around the world understand the challenge and the possibilities of good beer, and they started to enhance their cooking with it. They now suggest a specific beer with their masterpieces of food.

As an example of the first reason, why beer offers more difference in taste, drink the SARA buckwheat beer. It is so distinct from anything you have ever tasted and already a hit with some chefs who cook with it. The CHERISH FRUIT Lambics are the perfect example where fruit is introduced and actually dissolves in the beer during a very long aging process. Our WITTEKERKE is a spiced ale, where, as in many other Belgian beers, the brewer uses different grains (barley, wheat and oats), and adds extra spices (coriander, orange peel ..) in the brewkettle to give a distinct taste and flavor to his beer.

Why do most people believe wine offers more difference in taste? Because the wine-industry has a very good marketing strategy. They diversify and multiply the number of labels. The beer industry made the mistake of focusing on only one type of beer (Pilsner) and destroying and killing all small breweries, who did create their own specific beers. The marketing strategy in the wine industry works so well because the more labels you have the more different prices you have. And, the more different prices you have, the more chance you have to find very high prices among them, prices with a lot of margin and profit for the wine-maker, the distributor, and the retailer. If you have only one type of product left in a class of products, the only point of focus is the price.

Today, two events are reversing the course of the beverage-industry. First of all, we have the micro-brew revolution in the USA. The American public is discovering the wide variety in styles, colors, tastes and flavors of good beers. Very soon there will be more knowledge about beer and every thing related to beer on the North American continent than in any other place. Since the whole world looks up to the USA, and imitates their trends, the world will rediscover the blessings of good beer.

Secondly, the stubbornness of about 100 family brewers in Belgium, who didn't want to sell out to big brother. And last but not least, the timeless devotion to quality of a handful of abbeys in Belgium has saved a vast richness in brewing techniques, in beer styles, in yeast-strings, in flavors and tastes.

Enjoy a good Belgian beer with your next dinner. The Global Beer Network offers different styles of Belgian beer, with different flavors, colors and tastes per style! Endless combinations. We don't sell beer, we sell culture, good health, fun, excitement and adventure.
(Newsletter August 1997)