Well, that’s our usual way of dealing with gloom and the latest figures confirm that the Irish are the EU’s biggest consumers of booze – getting down over 30 litres of pure alcohol per year. But what’s it to be: a Guinness or a Murphy’s, a Jameson’s or a Midleton (a pricey whiskey, that, at €150 a bottle and now, you may recall, owned by Pernod Ricard)? Maybe none of these. Tastes in drinks are changing: more wine, more lager, more cider is being drunk, despite the relatively high cost of all of these, both in stores and pubs.

Good booze news for those Irish who help put away a million pints of Guinness a day (though the world’s biggest consumer of the brand are the Nigerians) was that Diageo, in the face of massive public protest, scrapped plans to close down the iconic St James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin, founded by the original Arthur Guinness in 1759. But there’s no reprieve for many country pubs which are going out of business at a record rate. A major reason is the government’s new tough line on drunk driving which is keeping many people at home. There is, though, I hear a growing demand for “craft beer”, produced by microbreweries. I’ll have to investigate.

From Riviera Reporter Issue 131: Feb/March 2009

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