Views of a Beer Sommelier

 



Marc Bishop is the Trade Marketing Manager for St Austell Brewery and a fully qualified Beer Sommelier. I caught up with him, sober, at the Plymouth CAMRA Beer Festival and posed a few questions. Interview by Neil Franklin, Plymouth CAMRA 

 

Q1. Marc, what got you started in the Brewery/Pub business?

Originally born in Oxfordshire, I fell into a job with Morland of Abingdon and discovered I had a flair for marketing. It was at the time of the 1988 Monopolies & Mergers commission report and whether that was good or bad I will leave for others to debate, but for Morland and myself it was certainly good. Luckily I grabbed the shirt tails of the then Marketing Manager, a very creative and clever thinking chap called Gerald but who was hopeless at the organisation bits necessary for any successful marketing campaign.  We were somewhat opposite in strengths and weaknesses but that worked and together we developed and brought to fruition his plan to launch the famous Old Speckled Hen.

A wonderful beer, Old Speckled Hen was one of the first successful guest ales and it quickly established itself in the market. We had some great times in the early days marketing this beer and every lunchtime involved a couple of pints at least of our favourite, well you just would not do that nowadays! I’m very proud of my time with Old Speckled Hen and the beer’s tremendous success, which rightly or wrongly, I have a small claim to fame for. Indeed at Morland I worked with some talented and fun people and it was such a shame when Greene King took them over, but…..to their credit, the Suffolk invaders have certainly taken the brand onto another greater and more successful level.

Q2.  You are a Beer Sommelier, what does it mean?

Basically it makes me an Ambassador and expert for beer (but not in how to brew beer).  I am an expert taster and sit on the St Austell Brewery taste panel, but I also enjoy bringing the beers and their stories to life with the general public. It’s not just about how the beer tastes, it’s about adding the perfume around it with a story that enhances its interest. I’m at my happiest talking about beer to a large group of people and helping them get enjoyment out of tasting beer. Training to become a beer sommelier is something you have to make happen yourself, but I do have to thank Waitrose in Saltash. I worked my way through their entire beer selection in a year, making tasting notes and holding my own private beer festival every weekend. I’m sure I became one of their best customers for that short period!

Q3. Of St Austell’s many beer awards, of which are you most proud?

A difficult question because St Austell have so many awards and I don’t brew the beer, so am not directly responsible for their excellent and consistent flavours. However I think I would pick Admiral’s Ale award as the World’s Best Bottled Beer in the International Beer challenge of 2008. I choose this because it’s still one of the biggest awards St Austell have ever received and also because I came up with the name for the beer and worked closely on the branding and launch.

Q4. Proper Job & Big Job are both great successes Why?

Well the beer is great of course, but I would say that! However, Proper Job was a cutting edge beer in terms of its flavour when launched and was one of the first truly modern IPA’s. The flavour is full of juicy citrus hops for a pineapple, lemongrass and resinous flavour with a solid bitter finish. Proper Jobs reputation continues to grow steadily as do sales. At St Austell we know Proper Job is something of a specialist beer and best sold by word of mouth, I would not see a time in the near future when it would receive large scale consumer advertising as Tribute does.

Big Job is Proper Job’s bigger brother, a double IPA, which actually uses a different blend of hops rather than just more of the hops Proper Job uses. A great beer and at 7.2% not to be messed with. The name also helps, quite quirky and with a laddish, humorous connotation.

At St Austell we are proud of both beers but realise where they fit in our portfolio of brands and each has a different role to play.

Q5. Tell us about Proper Cool

St Austell’s attempt to address the small but growing craft beer market meant that Proper Cool was quickly rebranded as St Austell IPA, a more credible option. It’s a very small brand for St Austell but has established itself and is steadily growing naturally.  We’ll see how we go on that one as they say.

Q6. Will St Austell be investing in pubs beyond their Cornwall stronghold?

I think for sure we will. Buying new pubs is a difficult and competitive area but St Austell although still steeped in our Cornish roots, are very much a South West based business from Bristol and Bath down. It would be great to acquire some more pubs in Plymouth but I don’t know of anything on the horizon at the moment. Watch this space though as you never know?

Q7. How does the relationship between Rattler Cyder and St Austell work?

Basically we have an agreement to wholesale Rattler and are their main route to market on draught in Cornwall. It’s as simple as that really; just like we wholesale many other beers, ciders, wines, spirits and minerals etc. Rattler is an amazing cider and hats off to Healeys who have made a great success of the marketing through hard work and above all innovation. They are younger people who saw an opportunity, went out and just did it. Good luck to them.

Q8. How do you feel about European beers?

Most German beers are brewed to the Reinheitsgebot (German Purity Law) which means they have to be brewed traditionally and do not contain any adjuncts or additions i.e. barley, liquor (water) and hops and not much else. I recall in my Beer Sommelier exam the specialist subject turned out to be German beers – very difficult especially as I’d swotted up specifically on Belgium beers! None-the-less I passed and having visited Munich and Berlin in recent years I do have a real fondness for them.

Q9. Do you believe sparklers should be mandatory?

At St Austell we prefer them to be used, but mandatory is too strong a word. The beer presents itself really well if a sparkler is used and at circa £3.50 per pint or more, people want their beer to not only taste good, but look good as well. Personally I think it’s down to personal choice. If I were a licensee I would certainly have a sparkler on all my cask ale taps but if a customer asked for a pint without the sparkler, I would have no hesitation in removing it. The customer is always right and this is a common sense approach that I know many licensees follow.

Q10. Tribute pasties are legendary in the Brewery Visitor Centre, any plans for Big Job pasties?

Ha, good question. None at the moment I think and I’m not sure Big Job would transport itself to make a good pasty. The really heavily hopped beers are not always great to cook with and let’s face it, Big Job is over-hopped (in a good way). It would be fun to try but the flavour could be too strong and overpower the other flavours in a pasty. I think an HSD pasty would be ideal, a much better beer to cook with. Or, perhaps a Smugglers pasty, now that really would be a wonderful pasty! Rest assured, you will be on the judging panel when we make them.

Marc, thanks for your time, effort and insight.

 

Interviewed by Neil Franklin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ladies Choice!

Having attended a number of Christmas Fayre's in the run up to the festive period, it's apparent how often beer is bought as a gift, especially by ladies for their fathers, husbands, brothers and uncles, or as that annoyingly difficult "Secret Santa" offering!

Beer does make a great gift. Speaking from experience I am thrilled when I receive beer as a gift because its very likely the beer chosen would not be something I would normally buy myself, hence I'm forced to try something new, or indeed something old - I recently received a bottle of Newcastle Brown, not a beer I'd remotely think of buying so to receive this iconic beer as a gift was very welcome. As a beer drinker receiving beer gifts is often the inroad to a new regular beer purchase of the future, so brewers and retailers should not overlook this once a year opportunity to get people to sample brands.

Choosing a beer gift can be hard as brewers and retailers tend to offer limited clues as to what the contents of a bottle might contain. Also, where a beer style is stated, if you don't understand its meaning it does little to help. For many ladies this is where the problems begin, so as a Beer Sommelier working at the point of purchase can really help. I normally ask where the gift recipient lives, their rough age, perhaps their interests and then if they do have any idea on what beer brands/styles the person currently drinks. I then try to match a beer to suit.

There are many ladies now who are very knowledgeable about beer, but for many who buy beer as gifts at these events that's not the case. So a little guidance is often much appreciated and can lead to them buying the chosen beer as part of their regular shop in the future. Remember, most shopping is done by the lady of the house and if a beer name sticks in her mind that her husband liked at Christmas, then its likely that beer will become part of the regular shop.

But back to Christmas. Another issue is that brewers tend to come at gifts from a very corporate viewpoint. The gift is a brewers box and rarely do you see gift boxes related to an occasion or season. That's not the case with other luxury items as Christmas gift boxes in the world of Chocolate are common place so there is some learning there from other product categories.

Hopefully all the gift boxes sold by myself and colleagues over the festive period will be well received by the recipients and Santa has them safely loaded onto his sleigh for delivery on the big day!