When Hoegaarden stoppend being Hoegaarden
According to Expatica, Belgian brewer InBev is to cut 232 jobs and close their Hoegaarden brewery, which is famous for the Hoegaarden white beer.
Production will be relocated to the Jupille site in Wallonia.
So, will Hoegaarden become known as Jupille, or will this be yet another case of a local product losing its local connection?
Maybe now would be a good time to get aquainted with the Slow Food movement.
Wednesday 30 Nov 2005 | Paul | The Pit
Hoegaarden must stay in Hoegaarden !!!!!
Let’s start an international protest action.
Only the spirit of the village can make the product what it is.
Can it? What kind of “spirit” would that be? What are the ingredients of it?
Arguably, much of the taste of any beer - or other food or drink product with a local heritage, for that matter - is influenced by a number of local factors, including such things as the hardness or softness of the water, the quality of the soil, how the ingredients are stored and so on…
It is also true that many foods and drinks are tied to local cultural identities and heritages and treating these as mass market commodities breaks that link. On this basis, it seems strange - to say the least - to see a distinctively Flemish beer such as Hoegaarden brewed in Walloon.
However, there is another issue here to do with standardisation.
InBev is - I assume - a reasonably rational company. As such, it will make financial sense for them to consolidate their brewing in one or two very large breweries, rather than lots of small scattered breweries.
This will allow them to enjoy economies of scale that are out of reach of smaller breweries, the eventual consequence of which is that most - if not all - breweries will either be taken over by a small number of very large companies, or go out of business.
Immediately, you start to lose variety.
But it goes further. Large breweries, like any rational company, will seek to maximise profits. This means that it is in the interest of the brewery to discontinue less popular beers (even if they are still profitable) in favour of bigger selling - and blander - beers.
As such, relocating Hoegaarden could well be a first step towards a beer market in which your only choice is Stella Artois or Heineken.