The Steinman clan recently enjoyed a visit to Argentina, where Jason Steinman (soon to join Beer Marketer’s Insights) was doing a Spanish-language immersion program and traveling in South America. There, we discovered a very hot craft beer scene.
We heard that craft beer has exploded in popularity in the past 5 years or so. And saw, first-hand, that outdoor craft-beer-focused cafes were extremely popular. In one case (in a 1 block stretch in Mendoza), the craft-beer spots were all hopping while the lone wine bar was virtually empty! Perhaps a case of “not your father’s” preferred alcoholic beverage?
We visited one craft brewer in the Mendoza region at the tail end of our Uco Valley Wine Tour, Good Dog Cerveza, where owner Torey Novak (an expat who married an Argentine) proudly showed off his brewery.
It must be challenging to run a brewery in a country where all foreign products and equipment are taxed at an extra 30%, where the peso keeps losing value against the dollar!