Czechvar aka Budweiser Budvar

Way back in August of 2005, I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a group of 12 Northwestern students. They were bringing their play out for 30 performances, one each day at 3:30. Riding on my actress girlfriend’s coattails, I lived with them in a five bedroom apartment right across the street from the west end of the Meadows. I offered up my services as a stagehand, and they provided me a place to sleep. It was a fun month.

About a week into the run, I discovered a quaint little pub around the corner from the venue called Proctor’s, a great place to drop in for a wee dram. I would say they had between 65 to 80 bottles of single malt scotch. Every bottle had a ribbon tied around its neck, which signified its price. It was off the beaten path, and there was always the exact same group of weird Scottish barflies that would always hit on Melissa and Allie. We would stop in 2-3 times a week after performances for a pint of McEwan’s or some wine.

One day, while investigating some new beer choices, I asked the bartender about the tap with the little swirly B on it.

“Euh, thet’s Buedweiser.”

What the shit? Do people really drink this stuff over here? I couldn’t believe it, and expressed my dismay to the bar. The guy sitting two stools down enlightened me.

“Neu, neu, neu. Thus isn’t yeur American beer, thus us theu Real Buedweizer” (The Scots that hung out at this place were harder to understand than most).

I didn’t know it at the time, but Anheuser-Busch is widely despised in Europe. It is pretty annoying how they stole the name Budweis (a type of beer brewed in the South Bohemian Region town of Budějovice, just like how the Pilsner style originated from the town of Pilsen) and then copyrighted it, branded it, and sued anyone else who tried to use that name. In fact, Budvar wasn’t available in the US until 2001, when it rebranded itself as Czechvar to appease Budweiser’s lawyers.

In an interesting turn of events, this past January, Anheuser-Busch and Budějovicky formed an agreement for A-B to market and distribute Czechvar in the U.S. But will this agreement help resolve any of their century-old legal battles? Don’t count on it.

Well, there’s your history lesson for today. Now on to the beer.

Czechvar pours a solid golden yellow. There are light malt notes with a skunky yet sweet bouquet. The texture is a bit watery, but this seems acceptable for the style. The taste is crisp and clean, and definitely a lot better than American Budweiser.

• Appearance: 2/3
• Aroma: 8/12
• Palate: 3.5/5
• Flavor: 13/20
• Overall: 7.5/10

Rating: 3.4

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!