I promised you some reflections from Italy, didn’t I? So, there I was, in Terracina, midway between Rome and Naples, a place not picked for any beery connection.
I had searched the web beforehand for Birra Artiginale and so on, without much success. I found a cafe/restaurant on Facebook which boasted of the ‘na birretta beers from Birradamare. They had three of them, as well as a few other Italian and Belgian craft beers. The ‘na biretta beers were quite all right, far better than Italian macros, they have a stylish packaging, but they would by no means stand out in a country where there is a consistently high quality in the market. They were moderately priced – 3 Euros per bottle if I remember correctly.
A pub next door had five of the Belgian Gordon’s beers on tap. This is a case of clever marketing. These beers tend to be sold very cheap nearer to their country of origin, but there are no laws saying the same product could not appeal to tramps in Brussels as well as bright young things in Southern Italy.
No sign of any interesting beers in any of the shops.
But in the upmarket restaurants, there were quite a few. I saw comprehensive beer lists in at least two of them, including the one who had excellent steaks and boldly called themselves the best restaurant in town. A page of the menu was set aside for craft beer, but the prices were high. A bottle of good local wine was from € 12 upwards, a bottle of craft beer started at €15. The problem is that does not only include sophisticated barrel aged wonders. The wheat beers, the brown ales and pilsners were also in the same price bracket.
Sure, I am prepared to pay extra for high quality. But, however much loving care you put into a bottle of Wit or Weiss, it is a humble drink, meant to quench the thirst and be used as an everyday tipple. We are talking about beers that would cost 50 cents a bottle in Germany.
Is this sustainable? I don’t think so. Sure, I get the point about high taxes and obstacles for Italian brewers. But it is absurd if Italian beers should cost twenty times the price of a similar bottle in Germany. If you want premium prices, you need to go for the premium end of the market, too. But, for a while, you might have a snobbish appeal.
But surely beer is both. It can both be a thirst quencher and a luxury item. It can be cheap or expensive. Sometimes we get too obsessed about price.
We are also paying for the place where we drink it, that moment in time. The special attention we are given. I wouldn’t expect a beer, however humble to cost the same if I drank it at home, in my local bar or saw it on sale in a five star hotel.
A few months ago I had lunch with a fellow beer enthusiast from Italy. He isn’t very impressed by this whole “Craft Beer as a luxury item thing”. Though he agrees that some of those beers are really remarkable he said that you don’t get your money’s worth with many of those über expensive and that he would love to have some locally brewed, reasonably priced, quality beer for everyday drink, and because he doesn’t have that, he chooses to buy stuff from Belgium, Germany, etc.
You’ve put your finger on something essential. In order to charge for a luxury item, the item has to offer something beyond the other 90% of the other items on the market. If you want to compete with wine, then you must offer something in they same league, which means something with the same punch, i.e. something with the same body, same complexity, and alcohol content. Super-premium wits, pilseners and weisses are not sustainable.
Hi! The price of italian craft beer is indeed an ongoing debate in Italy. Do you remember of which brewery were the bottles sold at 15 euro? Totally agree that “wits, pilseners and weisses are not sustainable” at that price.
Sorry, I can’t remember which brewery it was, they were all consistently high priced.
I think what we do have to watch is craft beer being priced out of the market by those who seek only to make (excess) profit from it. This is particularly so in nascent markets, but has more general application.
Yes beer can be cheap or expensive, but it must always hold its value, both in quality and price against your experience. If you sell a carefully crafted 75cl bottle of whatever at top dollar, it may well do. It is harder to feel the same when a flat charge – a high one – is charged for a bottle of bog standard which was Knut’s point I think.
Beer is beer.
Wine is wine.
Unfortunately, in Italy, that so straightforward claim isn’t that of the breweries. The most part of them is subjected to the wine market – where corporations power games involved in the slow-food business entail staggering prices – and think that direct beer to the high-catering segment market would be the shortest way with the fastest yield.
This, for the brewers. Distributors also smell the business, and – to a lesser degree, okay – dealers too.
Sure, I must admit that wine production have different and several factors compared to beer, and reaching the status of “luxury items” is frequent – does not justify its prices according to me, anyway; but it’s absurd to price over 9€ a simple blonde, wit, weizen and so on, when often the excuse it’s the local ingredient (under a territorial mark like AOC, AOCG, ecc., that bring it all back…) use. Bullshit, for me. And for my wallet, too. Especially when quality doesn’t balance price.
You know, in Italy we have around 300 craft breweries. In Belgium, are approximately 140 if I’m not mistaken. Draw your conclusions.
Oh, in that sad situation I don’t condemn anybody. Not at all, many italian craft beers are very good and worth the money. Even if it’s terribly depressing spending two or three euros more than Rochefort, Orval, and other belgian masterpieces.
Came across this interesting piece of academic research on luxury alcoholic beverages (Status (luxury) consumption in cross-national context: Managerial implications – http://www.pauravshukla.com/status-luxury-consumption-in-cross-national-context-managerial-implications). It shows how we Brits (Western world consumers) differ from Indians (Eastern world consumers) in their alcoholic consumption. I was amazed to know that India is pre-dominantly whisky oriented market and beer was hardly consumed there. Great market opportunity there, isn’t it?