They have canceled Del Borgo's appearance at Quintessence (on May 5) because of ABI's recent purchase of Del Borge. Announced on their facebook page today. On the bright side, it might be worth it after reading this from the announcement: "It is clear that in place of the Del Borgo beers, our visitors will have access to other Cantillon offerings! I promise you very special things within an expanded Cantillon beer list."
I doubt whoever sold Del Borgo cares, they'll be too busy building a fort out of bundles of cash. I know I would be
That is interesting, even a few days ago when I spoke to them they planned on having them. Oh well. I'd think it would be ok to have their beers before the acquisition date... but I understand the principle.
How does that make no sense? When most traditional producers were sold to ABI and the likes or closed Cantillon was one of the few ones going, and the only one to only make traditional lambic. All the ones sold to larger breweries produced mostly crap. I don't think that was a very easy time for Cantillon. So it's not that strange that their distaste for multinational brewing conglomerates is a bit stronger than average.
besides Belle-Vue, are there other lambic breweries under the ABI umbrella? it's my understanding that Belle-Vue helped gain notoriety for lambic on an international scale with their partnership with Artois. they later abandoned traditional lambic on their own volition. i'll say i support their move, i just don't understand the logic. i wasn't alive 50+ years ago when all of the traditional lambic producers were swallowed up, but i'm not buying that letting Del Borgo participate would in any way affect traditional lambic from being successful moving forward.
I often wonder, while reading posts where BAs share their feelings about industry logic, do people realize how uninformed they sound? No different than angsty fanboys complaining in forums about video game story arcs or iPhone design flaws, too many BAs only serve to over-analyze and extract the fun out of everything beer related. I would hope that every single person reading this forum, with rare and often famous brewer/BA exceptions, can accept the fact that we do not have all of the information, all of the history, nor any of the blood/sweat/tears necessary to make an informed decision as to who Mr. Van Roy should and should not include at this event.
So Cantillon can question industry logic (i.e., Del Borgo selling out), but it's wrong of me to point out the flawed logic? Cantillon offers self-guided tours. If ABI really wanted to "mind the geese", they could walk right in any day and learn what they wanted. Sorry for the attempt at honest discourse.
I think that's sort of the point. The discourse is honest but the idea that there is some "flawed logic" going on is where you lose me. None of us know the full story and for anyone without all of the information to question the reasoning of those that do is the only flawed logic that I can see.
i'm confused with why Cantillon would choose to make a metaphorical public statement that provides no real opinion or information at all. hiding behind the guise of "traditional lambic" is bizarre to me. the real logic seems simple to me... associating with ABI is bad for business. my point is to their's no real information or logic being conveyed. that's all i said. your rant of fanboys and extracting the fun out of craft beer could be placed in any thread in response to virtually anything posted on this site.
I spoke to Jean Pierre about it last week. He said that they didn't want to invite AB into their brewery because they spent years fighting interbrew, inbev, and whatever they were called before that. The big breweries did try to buy all the small breweries out of the market in Belgium.
FYI, This was posted on the Facebook page of Cantillon: Quintessence 2016 is over. We had a great time thanks to all of you, Cantillon friends. I won’t forget our volunteers who worked hard at every tasting spot, in the kitchen, shop, etc... I have waited the end of the event to speak in more detail about the change in the organisation and why I decided to do it. I got a lot of congratulations about the decision to cancel the inclusion of Del Borgo. Some, even if they agreed, didn’t understand why I wouldn’t present beers brewed before Inbev took the Italian brewery over. To be honest, my first intention was to cancel the Del Borgo presence and invite Leonardo Di Vicenzo as independent brewer with the beer he brewed before the Inbev repurchase. I have a lot of respect for Leo and in my opinion, he deserved to be present. But this idea was more due to our friendship and was not the best one to react to the last events. In such a case, a firm decision is the best, all or nothing. It was nothing, and here are my personal reasons why. It was first ideological but also due to our history, the history of the Cantillon brewery. In the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s, the big industry bought over a lot of small craft breweries. At this time, because of contracts enforced with bars by the industrial breweries, the most important way of beer sales for craft breweries was closed. Competition was no longer equal and a lot of small producers had a lot of trouble, and had no other choice to shut their doors or to join the industrial side. In 20 years time, we lost a lot of beautiful breweries, a lot of great beers and a lot of history! We are very fortunate to live today through a new craft beer revolution, but I have the feeling that the big industry will adapt, at a global level, with the same politics they used in Belgium forty years ago. In Belgium, decades ago, the reaction against this monopoly arrived too late, the power was already in the other camp. That’s why, in my opinion, we need to react as fast as possible and that’s also why I couldn’t accepted an Inbev member in the Cantillon brewery. Today the big industry looks to craft brewers on how to build the best image possible, then says “look, we are like you”. They are not, and if they need to emulate us, I’m sure we are doing well enough without them. Understand me, this personal point of view has nothing to do with the beer quality. Some “industrial” beer is well made and craft doesn’t always mean quality. Small industry is mainly working with small producers from the region. When you drink a craft beer, you give work to more than one craft producer! Unfortunately, I’m sure it’s not the same when you are drinking a beer produced by big industry. If we allow big industry to take over what we've built, history will repeat itself...and I hope we won’t live again the events of Belgium forty years ago. Jean Van Roy
