It’s been a wacky month in the world of beer, with strange tales ranging from North Carolina to NATO. So, grab this month’s copy of Vogue (it makes sense), crack open a brewski and settle in for a few of our head-scratching tales.
A BETTER WAY TO GET BOMBED
A small brewery in Finland has launched a NATO-themed beer to mark the Nordic country’s bid to join the Western military alliance. Olaf Brewing’s OTAN lager features a blue label with a cartoon version of a beer-drinking medieval knight in metal armor emblazoned with NATO’s compass symbol.
The beer’s name is a play on the Finnish expression “Otan olutta,” which means “I’ll have a beer,” and the French abbreviation for NATO, which is “OTAN” (Organisation du Traité de l’Atlantique Nord). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has two official languages, English and French.
CEO Petteri Vanttinen says that the craft brewery’s ad hoc decision to start producing the beer was motivated by “worries over the war in Ukraine” and its consequences for Finland.
He described the new lager as having “a taste of security, with a hint of freedom.”
Finland and Sweden month submitted an application to join NATO at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
Olaf Brewing says its new beer also honours the eastern Finnish town of Savonlinna, the brewery’s base located a few dozen kilometers from Finland’s border with Russia.
Savonlinna is known for St. Olaf’s Castle, a medieval structure from 1475 that serves as a venue for an annual international opera festival.
WERE THEY DRINKING?
The owner of a rural English pub says he was asked to change the bar’s name by a fashion magazine because of the village where it’s located: Vogue.
Mark Graham, who runs the Star Inn at Vogue, said he received a letter from British Vogue publisher Condé Nast, saying the name could “cause problems” because members of the public might confuse the two businesses.
Graham stood his ground and sent a reply noting that the Cornwall village is considerably older than the magazine, whose British edition was founded in 1916. “I presume that at the time when you chose the name Vogue… you didn’t seek permission from the villagers of the real Vogue,” he wrote.
Ultimately, the magazine backed off, acknowledging that “we did not need to send such a letter on this occasion.”
AND ANOTHER VICTORY FOR THE LITTLE GUY
North Carolina regulators were wrong to reject a beer label that featured a silhouette of a naked man standing next to a campfire, a US federal judge ruled. The owners of Maryland-based Flying Dog Brewery argued that the North Carolina Alcohol Beverage Control Commission violated their First Amendment rights by rejecting the label for its Freezin’ Season Winter Ale.
The commission had said the label was in “bad taste,” but later allowed the beer to be sold, but Flying Dog proceeded with the lawsuit anyway, hoping to get the regulation struck down – and US District Judge Terrence W. Boyle did just that.
This is not the first time Flying Dog has gone to court over its labels. A federal appeals court ruled in favour of the brewery in 2015 regarding a ban of the sale of its Raging Bitch beer in the state of Michigan. The dispute began in 2009 when a board determined the label to be “detrimental to the health, safety, or welfare of the general public.”
The label had depicted a female dog with accentuated features, bared teeth and a tongue covered in blood. Both of the labels were created by artist Ralph Steadman, who frequently collaborated with Hunter S. Thompson, the founder of “gonzo” journalism.
With glass purposefully in hand, we at Travel Industry Today continue our series on some of the planet’s best bars, patios and rooftop venues. For more articles in the series, click here:
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