thedrifter
03-16-07, 08:47 AM
March 16, 2007, 7:45 a.m.
Goodbye Guinness?(!)
The decline of a classic.
An NRO Symposium
Editor's note: Is anyone drinking Guinness in Ireland anymore? This important news story hit the wires earlier in the week, in anticipation of Saint Patrick’s Day. So what’s the deal and can Ireland survive? NRO asked some experts.
Jim Geraghty
Paraphrased from the appropriately-named-for-the-occasion On Tap:
The headline screams crisis, but the story tells a different story:
Taste for Guinness wanes in changing Ireland
But in the story, we learn, the Irish are still drinking (not quite shocking news there) but they’re diversifying their palette - trying other beers and ciders, and drinking more wine. Look, I like Guinness, it’s my drink of choice when it’s on tap, but the fact that the Irish are trying beers besides Guinness is not the death-knell for this iconic brand and national symbol. In fact, the last time I was in Dublin, the best place I went to was Porterhouse Brewery, which doesn’t serve Guinness; they serve their own selection of about a dozen microbrews.
I’ll give the Crunchy Cons a shot glass worth of credit — small, local, and recently brewed is usually better, particularly when it comes to beer.
— Jim Geraghty reports on the Democratic 2008 field at The Hillary Spot.
Michael Graham
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat. — Irish food writer Alex Levine.
Forget St. Patrick’s Day — why would we ever drink anything that isn’t Irish?
I am not Irish, nor am I enamored of Celtic culture as a whole. But after discovering the satisfying heft of a morning cup of Irish tea, I abandoned Starbucks forever. After my first Guinness in a Dublin pub, I declared it unfair to the world’s brewers to mention their products in the same breath. (I also discovered that, as legend claims, the Guinness in Ireland really does taste different — raising disturbing questions about the island’s water purification system.)
And then there’s Bushmill’s Irish whiskey…I’m speechless.
When St. Peter buys me my first round at the Pearly Gates Pub, if it’s not Bushmill’s, I’ll be looking for lodgings elsewhere.
I’ve never understood why Irish whiskey isn’t more popular in the U.S. American whiskey is rude and forward. Scotch drinkers themselves admit their peaty brew is an acquired taste. But Irish whiskey is as gentle as the evening breeze and as welcoming as a pub’s open door.
Plus, it’s Irish. Not to horn in on Ann Coulter’s act, but the connection between Irish culture and the delights of fermented libations is hardly obscure. Why wouldn’t my drink of choice come from the world’s choicest drinkers — the Irish?
Irish dance may be a migraine set to music, and Irish cuisine is banned by international treaty from Guantanamo Bay. But when an Irishman orders a drink, my first instinct is to call out “For two — and make mine a double.”
— Boston radio talk host Michael Graham appears weekly on Ireland’s Newstalk radio network.
Chris McEvoy
Once upon a time I was walking in New York City beside a real live Irish girl. This girl was the exact thing — a bonafide Colleen from Ireland, the daughter of a cousin of a mother of a friend of mine who had come to the states for the summer. She was unattractive, so at my young age my only interest in her was her Irishness. I had never before been to Ireland and this girl was an original; and I liked how she sounded and when I didn’t look at her she was a mythical Irish beauty.
It was a summer night and we talked and walked for a good while, and she answered that yes, the grass really was that green. The Guinness? “Better back home than here.” And I could just taste it: creamy-topped brown-black Irish Guinness pulled long and slow in a dark thatchy pub. Lip-licking perfect, and not too many steps later I thought it was nice when she asked about my America, a place where we agreed a true Guinness pint was not to be found. “Been yet to California?” “Work in any of these buildings here we’re passin’?” Soon enough we were discussing my living situation, which back then was occasionally at my parents’ house and the rest of the time was elsewhere. I noted that when I was back home in Queens that I slept on the floor in my old bedroom, which had been taken over by my younger brothers who had stolen the beds. “No bed, but I make do,” and as I said this I felt the strong simple Irishman inside me emerge. But I had fouled, apparently badly, and the mythical Irish beauty (when you didn’t look) beside me altered in haunting way.
“You Americans are always complainin’ bout sumthin’, aren’t yeh?” snipped the Hag. “Be thankful y’have space enough for sleepin’ at all.” That savor in my mouth — brought on by the imagined perfectness of the perfect pint in Ireland — vanished. I was a Joycian creature lost in the night, tasting the hollow dryness of anguish and anger.
True Irishmen, to this day I assume, can sleep anywhere — pub floors, behind the dole dispatchery, bogs — and never make a peep about it. And so if they are in fact no longer drinking Guinness in the amounts they used to, I have it on good authority they’re not complainin’.
— Chris McEvoy is executive editor of National Review.
John J. Miller
Ireland still has its saint. St. Patrick was a great man, and for Ireland he’s the perfect patron saint. But he isn’t that best patron saint for Irish Americans. That honor belongs to St. Brendan.
— John J. Miller is NR’s national political reporter and the father of boys named Brendan and Patrick.
David Quinn
The main contribution so far to St. Patrick’s Week over here in Ireland has been a good old-fashioned condemnation of it by our best known moral theologian, Fr. Vincent Twomey. Fr. Twomey, who is, let is be added, a former student of Pope Benedict, has described Ireland as “an increasingly secularised and vulgarised country” where “Paddy’s Week is descending into an excuse for mindless alcohol-fuelled revelry.”
Fr. Twomey has been all over the airwaves thanks to his comments which have struck a chord with a lot of people and angered others. The angry ones hate to be told that there is any downside whatsoever to the decline of the Catholic Church. The “alcohol-fuelled revelry” is, for them, a kind of extended celebration of Mother Church’s woes.
Some revelry. We’ve always been famed as champion boozers but alcohol consumption by the Irish is up a whopping 40pc in just ten years. A new study has just confirmed that we are the biggest binge-drinkers in Europe.
The increase in alcohol consumption is explained by three things: increased prosperity; more drinking by women; and more drinking by the young.
But there may be a fourth factor, rarely mentioned, but brought up by Fr. Twomey: namely secularization. The less we believe in God the more we’re abusing alcohol and drugs. Is there a causal connection? Fr. Twomey believes so. I think he’s right. We’ve got to fill that God-shaped hole with something.
— David Quinn is a writer in Ireland.
Taste for Guinness wanes in changing Ireland
By Matthew Tostevin
Tue Mar 13, 7:21 PM ET
How about a glass of wine to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day in Dublin?
That might not sit well on the stomach of many residents of Ireland's capital this Saturday as they mark the year's biggest party with copious quantities of Guinness, the rich, dark beer with a creamy head that is the national drink.
But the cliche of the Irish pub filled with Guinness drinkers is giving way to a different picture as new wealth, new opportunities and immigration transform tastes and drinking habits in one of Europe's fastest growing economies.
Alongside the decline of Guinness is an increasing appetite for wine, spirits, cider and imported beer.
"You'll still sell Guinness, but you'll sell the likes of wheat beers, beers from the Czech Republic, beers from Poland," said Eddy Martin, who runs the Bailey Bar.
"Beer sales are declining while the amount of wine is phenomenal. Before, people would say they wanted a white wine, now they'll say they want a Chardonnay," he said at the bar in the heart of Dublin's smartest shopping district.
Latest figures from global drinks giant Diageo, which owns Guinness, show local sales for the brand down about 7 percent in the six months to the end of December 2006 from a year before. Wine now accounts for over a fifth of alcohol drunk in Ireland.
"The lifestyle shift has meant that Guinness has been impacted to a higher degree," said Grainne Mackin, Diageo's head of corporate communications in Ireland.
"Instead of sticking to one sort of drink, there are now two or three that people might have and that has meant we're in competition with a lot more drinks."
ACQUIRED TASTE
The scale of the shift from drinking Guinness, which takes its dark color from the roasted barley, appears even more dramatic given that Ireland has the fastest growing population in the European Union.
"In times gone past, alcohol in this country was an acquired taste. You acquired a taste for porter, or Guinness," said Paul Stevenson, president of the Vintners Association of Ireland, which represents pub landlords.
"Your father would have brought you to the pub and sat you down and taught you how to drink. That doesn't seem to happen now. When people taste something they want something instantly which tastes nice."
But the decline of Guinness is by no means global.
Sales are doing well in North America and parts of West Africa -- where the stronger, bottled local version of Guinness has a reputation, perhaps undeserved, for everything from helping prevent malaria to enhancing male sexual prowess.
But while "Irish pubs" have become a fixture across the globe, many in Ireland have been struggling. Guinness reckons Irish pubs are opening abroad at the rate of about one a day -- the same rate as rural pubs are closing back home.
FAST LANE
That is bad news for Guinness. Most people say it is best straight from the tap, a process that should take at least a couple of minutes to deliver a perfect pint.
"People are cash-rich, but time-poor so there's been a shift away from the amount of times that people are going to the pub," said Mackin.
The trend is toward drinking with food in restaurants as well as in buying wine or beer to drink at home. With a pint (just over half a liter) of Guinness costing over 4 euros ($5.30) in a Dublin pub, it may not look that cheap either.
Pub landlords complain other discouraging factors have been a smoking ban and, in rural areas, tougher restrictions on drinking and driving to cut road deaths -- though many point out that Guinness remains their best seller.
"You might find your ladies drinking wine, but only the odd male -- and then with food," said Keith O'Brien, 25, barman at a pub near Dublin's River Liffey.
"Younger drinkers are more likely to drink lager or cider, more refreshing drinks, especially in the summer, though. They'll turn to shots (of spirits) when they've filled up on the beer and can't get anything more in."
The big challenge for Guinness is to win over the new generation of drinkers beyond the March 17 Saint Patrick's Day festivities, which are already bringing their annual outbreak of shamrocks and leprechauns to Dublin streets.
That means looking for new marketing strategies worldwide from the company behind such slogans as "Guinness for Strength," "Guinness is good for you" and "Pure Genius."
One Guinness Web site shows the kind of thing being tried in the run-up to Saint Patrick's Day. First the shamrock dances to Irish fiddle music, before a modern beat tellingly starts up. (dev01.tmw.co.uk/diageo/gu...ntro.html)
"Without a doubt, a lot of our Guinness drinkers are older people," said Mackin. "A lot of our marketing and branding is focused on attracting younger and newer people. The difficulty is that you cannot alienate your older Guinness drinkers too."
Ellie
Goodbye Guinness?(!)
The decline of a classic.
An NRO Symposium
Editor's note: Is anyone drinking Guinness in Ireland anymore? This important news story hit the wires earlier in the week, in anticipation of Saint Patrick’s Day. So what’s the deal and can Ireland survive? NRO asked some experts.
Jim Geraghty
Paraphrased from the appropriately-named-for-the-occasion On Tap:
The headline screams crisis, but the story tells a different story:
Taste for Guinness wanes in changing Ireland
But in the story, we learn, the Irish are still drinking (not quite shocking news there) but they’re diversifying their palette - trying other beers and ciders, and drinking more wine. Look, I like Guinness, it’s my drink of choice when it’s on tap, but the fact that the Irish are trying beers besides Guinness is not the death-knell for this iconic brand and national symbol. In fact, the last time I was in Dublin, the best place I went to was Porterhouse Brewery, which doesn’t serve Guinness; they serve their own selection of about a dozen microbrews.
I’ll give the Crunchy Cons a shot glass worth of credit — small, local, and recently brewed is usually better, particularly when it comes to beer.
— Jim Geraghty reports on the Democratic 2008 field at The Hillary Spot.
Michael Graham
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat. — Irish food writer Alex Levine.
Forget St. Patrick’s Day — why would we ever drink anything that isn’t Irish?
I am not Irish, nor am I enamored of Celtic culture as a whole. But after discovering the satisfying heft of a morning cup of Irish tea, I abandoned Starbucks forever. After my first Guinness in a Dublin pub, I declared it unfair to the world’s brewers to mention their products in the same breath. (I also discovered that, as legend claims, the Guinness in Ireland really does taste different — raising disturbing questions about the island’s water purification system.)
And then there’s Bushmill’s Irish whiskey…I’m speechless.
When St. Peter buys me my first round at the Pearly Gates Pub, if it’s not Bushmill’s, I’ll be looking for lodgings elsewhere.
I’ve never understood why Irish whiskey isn’t more popular in the U.S. American whiskey is rude and forward. Scotch drinkers themselves admit their peaty brew is an acquired taste. But Irish whiskey is as gentle as the evening breeze and as welcoming as a pub’s open door.
Plus, it’s Irish. Not to horn in on Ann Coulter’s act, but the connection between Irish culture and the delights of fermented libations is hardly obscure. Why wouldn’t my drink of choice come from the world’s choicest drinkers — the Irish?
Irish dance may be a migraine set to music, and Irish cuisine is banned by international treaty from Guantanamo Bay. But when an Irishman orders a drink, my first instinct is to call out “For two — and make mine a double.”
— Boston radio talk host Michael Graham appears weekly on Ireland’s Newstalk radio network.
Chris McEvoy
Once upon a time I was walking in New York City beside a real live Irish girl. This girl was the exact thing — a bonafide Colleen from Ireland, the daughter of a cousin of a mother of a friend of mine who had come to the states for the summer. She was unattractive, so at my young age my only interest in her was her Irishness. I had never before been to Ireland and this girl was an original; and I liked how she sounded and when I didn’t look at her she was a mythical Irish beauty.
It was a summer night and we talked and walked for a good while, and she answered that yes, the grass really was that green. The Guinness? “Better back home than here.” And I could just taste it: creamy-topped brown-black Irish Guinness pulled long and slow in a dark thatchy pub. Lip-licking perfect, and not too many steps later I thought it was nice when she asked about my America, a place where we agreed a true Guinness pint was not to be found. “Been yet to California?” “Work in any of these buildings here we’re passin’?” Soon enough we were discussing my living situation, which back then was occasionally at my parents’ house and the rest of the time was elsewhere. I noted that when I was back home in Queens that I slept on the floor in my old bedroom, which had been taken over by my younger brothers who had stolen the beds. “No bed, but I make do,” and as I said this I felt the strong simple Irishman inside me emerge. But I had fouled, apparently badly, and the mythical Irish beauty (when you didn’t look) beside me altered in haunting way.
“You Americans are always complainin’ bout sumthin’, aren’t yeh?” snipped the Hag. “Be thankful y’have space enough for sleepin’ at all.” That savor in my mouth — brought on by the imagined perfectness of the perfect pint in Ireland — vanished. I was a Joycian creature lost in the night, tasting the hollow dryness of anguish and anger.
True Irishmen, to this day I assume, can sleep anywhere — pub floors, behind the dole dispatchery, bogs — and never make a peep about it. And so if they are in fact no longer drinking Guinness in the amounts they used to, I have it on good authority they’re not complainin’.
— Chris McEvoy is executive editor of National Review.
John J. Miller
Ireland still has its saint. St. Patrick was a great man, and for Ireland he’s the perfect patron saint. But he isn’t that best patron saint for Irish Americans. That honor belongs to St. Brendan.
— John J. Miller is NR’s national political reporter and the father of boys named Brendan and Patrick.
David Quinn
The main contribution so far to St. Patrick’s Week over here in Ireland has been a good old-fashioned condemnation of it by our best known moral theologian, Fr. Vincent Twomey. Fr. Twomey, who is, let is be added, a former student of Pope Benedict, has described Ireland as “an increasingly secularised and vulgarised country” where “Paddy’s Week is descending into an excuse for mindless alcohol-fuelled revelry.”
Fr. Twomey has been all over the airwaves thanks to his comments which have struck a chord with a lot of people and angered others. The angry ones hate to be told that there is any downside whatsoever to the decline of the Catholic Church. The “alcohol-fuelled revelry” is, for them, a kind of extended celebration of Mother Church’s woes.
Some revelry. We’ve always been famed as champion boozers but alcohol consumption by the Irish is up a whopping 40pc in just ten years. A new study has just confirmed that we are the biggest binge-drinkers in Europe.
The increase in alcohol consumption is explained by three things: increased prosperity; more drinking by women; and more drinking by the young.
But there may be a fourth factor, rarely mentioned, but brought up by Fr. Twomey: namely secularization. The less we believe in God the more we’re abusing alcohol and drugs. Is there a causal connection? Fr. Twomey believes so. I think he’s right. We’ve got to fill that God-shaped hole with something.
— David Quinn is a writer in Ireland.
Taste for Guinness wanes in changing Ireland
By Matthew Tostevin
Tue Mar 13, 7:21 PM ET
How about a glass of wine to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day in Dublin?
That might not sit well on the stomach of many residents of Ireland's capital this Saturday as they mark the year's biggest party with copious quantities of Guinness, the rich, dark beer with a creamy head that is the national drink.
But the cliche of the Irish pub filled with Guinness drinkers is giving way to a different picture as new wealth, new opportunities and immigration transform tastes and drinking habits in one of Europe's fastest growing economies.
Alongside the decline of Guinness is an increasing appetite for wine, spirits, cider and imported beer.
"You'll still sell Guinness, but you'll sell the likes of wheat beers, beers from the Czech Republic, beers from Poland," said Eddy Martin, who runs the Bailey Bar.
"Beer sales are declining while the amount of wine is phenomenal. Before, people would say they wanted a white wine, now they'll say they want a Chardonnay," he said at the bar in the heart of Dublin's smartest shopping district.
Latest figures from global drinks giant Diageo, which owns Guinness, show local sales for the brand down about 7 percent in the six months to the end of December 2006 from a year before. Wine now accounts for over a fifth of alcohol drunk in Ireland.
"The lifestyle shift has meant that Guinness has been impacted to a higher degree," said Grainne Mackin, Diageo's head of corporate communications in Ireland.
"Instead of sticking to one sort of drink, there are now two or three that people might have and that has meant we're in competition with a lot more drinks."
ACQUIRED TASTE
The scale of the shift from drinking Guinness, which takes its dark color from the roasted barley, appears even more dramatic given that Ireland has the fastest growing population in the European Union.
"In times gone past, alcohol in this country was an acquired taste. You acquired a taste for porter, or Guinness," said Paul Stevenson, president of the Vintners Association of Ireland, which represents pub landlords.
"Your father would have brought you to the pub and sat you down and taught you how to drink. That doesn't seem to happen now. When people taste something they want something instantly which tastes nice."
But the decline of Guinness is by no means global.
Sales are doing well in North America and parts of West Africa -- where the stronger, bottled local version of Guinness has a reputation, perhaps undeserved, for everything from helping prevent malaria to enhancing male sexual prowess.
But while "Irish pubs" have become a fixture across the globe, many in Ireland have been struggling. Guinness reckons Irish pubs are opening abroad at the rate of about one a day -- the same rate as rural pubs are closing back home.
FAST LANE
That is bad news for Guinness. Most people say it is best straight from the tap, a process that should take at least a couple of minutes to deliver a perfect pint.
"People are cash-rich, but time-poor so there's been a shift away from the amount of times that people are going to the pub," said Mackin.
The trend is toward drinking with food in restaurants as well as in buying wine or beer to drink at home. With a pint (just over half a liter) of Guinness costing over 4 euros ($5.30) in a Dublin pub, it may not look that cheap either.
Pub landlords complain other discouraging factors have been a smoking ban and, in rural areas, tougher restrictions on drinking and driving to cut road deaths -- though many point out that Guinness remains their best seller.
"You might find your ladies drinking wine, but only the odd male -- and then with food," said Keith O'Brien, 25, barman at a pub near Dublin's River Liffey.
"Younger drinkers are more likely to drink lager or cider, more refreshing drinks, especially in the summer, though. They'll turn to shots (of spirits) when they've filled up on the beer and can't get anything more in."
The big challenge for Guinness is to win over the new generation of drinkers beyond the March 17 Saint Patrick's Day festivities, which are already bringing their annual outbreak of shamrocks and leprechauns to Dublin streets.
That means looking for new marketing strategies worldwide from the company behind such slogans as "Guinness for Strength," "Guinness is good for you" and "Pure Genius."
One Guinness Web site shows the kind of thing being tried in the run-up to Saint Patrick's Day. First the shamrock dances to Irish fiddle music, before a modern beat tellingly starts up. (dev01.tmw.co.uk/diageo/gu...ntro.html)
"Without a doubt, a lot of our Guinness drinkers are older people," said Mackin. "A lot of our marketing and branding is focused on attracting younger and newer people. The difficulty is that you cannot alienate your older Guinness drinkers too."
Ellie