Italy: Craft beer gaining ground with confidence since the mid-1990s

Italian craft brewers are creating a thriving scene in a country regarded as a beer backwater, The Guardian reported earlier this week.

The country is still dominated by two huge bland lager brands, Peroni and Moretti. In the last decade, however, there has been a huge change. Craft beer has taken off in a big way. Italy now has 360 microbreweries and, from nothing, craft beer has come to account for 2% of total Italian beer sales.

This is some turnaround considering that in the mid-1990s there was almost no craft beer brewed commercially in Italy. Pioneers Birrificio Lambrate, Birrificio Italiano and Le Baladin’s influential owner Matterino “Teo” Musso only started brewing in 1996. Now, a new microbrewery opens every few weeks; 140 were founded between 2008 and 2010.

Davide Bertinotti, secretary of Movimento Birrario Italiano (MoBI), a consumer organisation, says that there are many reasons why craft beer has taken off:

“[It] originally started in 1995, when the Italian parliament passed a bill that made homebrewing legal and simplified some procedures for brewpubs. The explosion came from many factors: a shift from high alcohol - wine - to lower alcohol but flavourful drink consumption, and a new awareness of avoiding drinking and driving; searching for healthy and genuine food and drinks; and the fact that, in Italy, we do not have a beer tradition. What’s new is also fashionable!”

14 October, 2011