I've been at this old beer writing game for a long time, which is likely why I don't do it nearly as much as I used to. Thanks to the What's Doing archive, though, I can sometimes be reunited with stuff I wrote way back when I were a lad. What is (painfully) reproduced below, is one of these.
When I say I have been banging on about the Beer Orders for a long time, I really mean it. I may have mentioned them before this article, but I don't know for sure. Suffice it to say, this blog has moaned about the law of unintended consequences resulting from this fateful legislation, more than once.
So how right or wrong was I? Well, let's go through it. Well, Tetley-Walker and Boddingtons, the subjects of the title, have gone completely as companies. In the case of Boddingtons, their beer, a shadow of its former self, hangs on as an unloved canned brand of AB InBev. Tetley-Walker has vanished forever, its brewery long since demolished along with that of its erstwhile partner, Joshua Tetley of Leeds. Tetley Bitter, as iconic as Boddingtons in its day, still exists as a cask beer, now contract brewed by Camerons in Hartlepool. Whitbread, who bought Boddingtons has more or less vanished from pub game and certainly has from the beer business. Greenalls have gone too, turning up their toes in an act of self-destruction, though they saw it as a grim and impossible future which my article predicted. Morlands, also mentioned as vulnerable, have long since become part of the all encompassing Greene King and live on, only as an afterthought in GK's brand portfolio.
I predicted, too, that "We cannot expect anything other than a contraction of choice from the big suppliers, be they brewer or pub chain. At best we can expect a collection of tired old national brands brewed down to a price, at God knows where."
Sadly, my all seeing eye wasn't perfect. I got the demise of Vaux right, but didn't see that Greene King and Banks (now Marstons) surviving as well as they have, through neither in their previous form.
Still, I wasn't that far off and thankfully, despite all, we have our family brewers in Manchester surviving and thriving. I did allude to that.
I was spot on about the Beer Orders, the effects of which are still being felt today and tired old national brands, though not what they'd turn out to be. I suspect Doom Bar didn't even exist then as a regional brand.
I
didn't predict the rise of the many small brewers - well not there
anyway - nor the vanishing of the previous big six, but heyho, I didn't
do so bad overall.
