Ask Mario: a free monthly newsletter full of food, restaurant & chef news etc - August 2006: Beer - there’s more to it than just ‘the best long drink in the world’

Beer - there’s more to it than just ‘the best long drink in the world’ by Rupert Ponsonby Rupert Ponsonby is director of one of the leading specialist drinks PR companies (randr.co.uk), and is a true expert in the field of matching beer with food. Read his fascinating insight into this fast-growing gastronomic trend, as well as his practical advice on how to select the right beer. He also exposes a few beer myths…… I was brought up on claret and hock, taking sips from the foot of bottles as they sat discarded in the broom cupboard. And then, as a teenager, along came lager and ale, Scottish brews made for a mass market, drunk from cans as I waited for the fish to bite. And I hated them. How could anyone willingly drink such flat-flavoured brews? But in 1994, Whitbread rang one day to ask if I would help them ‘design’ twelve cask beers from a wine drinker’s point of view. And I was hooked. We threw the rulebook out of the window and designed what we wanted to drink, not what British brewers were habitually brewing. And we borrowed lessons from wine, brewing each beer as a single hop varietal, highlighting the flavour of each hop and making it appropriate for both the season and the brew. Twenty years ago, after being harvested and dried, hops would be stored in ‘pockets’ 5’ tall which allowed air and light to degrade their wonderful aromas. They became cheesy and dull, and their vibrancy and fruit died away. But in the nineties, hop growers learnt to pelletize their hops or to package them in small airtight parcels at near freezing point, so as to keep the hop’s elegance on song until the next harvest. And why leave the spicing to hops alone, thought Whitbread R&D? Before 1550, there were no hops being grown commercially in England anyway, and beer’s cereal flavours were spiced up by fruit, honey, herbs, spices and the bark of trees. So we added pepper and lemon to one beer; juniper and rye to another; and, biggest of all, dark chocolate to a third. Publicity went wild and my interest in ‘beer’ soared. Ten years on and it started to dawn on me that British gastronomy was missing out in its snobbish, ignorant, or maybe commercially-minded disregard of beer. Even restaurants happy to have a salted and un-salted butter and four sorts of bread (all free) and three or four mineral waters at £3 a bottle would find no place for beer, or else provide three delicately-made international lagers all of the same style. Were they crazy? “It will effect our wine sales” they cried. So it was left to the great Thierry Tomasin of the Aubergine in Chelsea (tel: 020 7352 3449) to prove them wrong. Maitre d’, Tomasin, was for ten years sommelier at Le Gavroche, (tel: 020 7408 0881) one of London’s poshest restaurants. We had introduced him to the subject of beer menus through the Coors Beer Naturally campaign and he took to beer immediately, like a duck to cherries. Would a man whose wine list ventures hundreds of pounds for a bottle of Gruaud Larose or Yquem fear a diminution of his margins by introducing beer? “I have a gentleman who eats here twice a week and I have been introducing him to beer. He is fascinated. His favourites are a light English ale with Red Mullet à l’Escabeche; the Saint Feuillien Brune with Fillet of Lamb and Provençal Vegetables; and Pietra beer from Corsica, made from sweet chestnuts, with White Chocolate Parfait. We now have about twenty beers on our list priced between £4-£32 a bottle, and they make a healthy contribution to our overheads.” He is not the only one. The Greyhound pub (tel: 020 7978 7021) in London’s Battersea High Street has been recently taken over by Mark van der Goot, ex sommelier of The Greenhouse, and he has gone big on food and beer, with a list of about 20 exotica from all over the world. Green’s Champagne and Oyster Bar in St James’s (tel: 020 7930 4566) has six beers from Britain for their traditional British foods. Roast in Borough Market has the same number, with Scottish and English brews to the fore. And Goanese specialist Quilon in Westminster has a seven-course beer & food menu, and ten beers on the list. Le Gavroche itself has embraced 8 beers on their new beer list and is giving diners a cherry beer with lightly seared spiced tuna as the first course in their 7 course special menu. According to Michel Roux, only one diner has so far asked for a glass of wine in its stead. Anthony’s in Leeds (tel: 0113 245 5922) is the Fat Duck of the north, and his was one of the first restaurants in the UK to embrace beer & food. Here beer is certainly in-your-face with over twenty bottled beers on the list linked on the menu with specific dishes. So why has the beer and food matching idea taken so long to become accepted? I think the answer is either ignorance or snobbery. As to snobbery, it was all summed up for me when I asked for a beer list in a top restaurant in London. “You don’t mean ale, do you sir?” said the sommelier, his nostrils contorting as if he had just stepped in a dog’s worst deed. There is no room for snobbery from anyone who understands the immense intricacies of the brewing process or who understands the range of beer styles and flavours now available here in bottle, as highlighted by the educational must-have, The Beer Academy. But the ignorance is understandable if you think that Britain’s brewing industry has until recently signally failed to tell anyone anything of intellectual or sensory interest about beer. In contrast to the wine industry, which has spent millions of pounds telling people about the magic of wine, brewers have until recently been content to use language which 9/10 of their customers cannot understand. Read more about matching beer with food...