The Red Triangle

 

Lunch in Beaumaris today, which can only mean the snug at The Bull, one of the oldest pubs you'll find anywhere, dating back to the 1400s. As usual, of course, the star turn for me is the Bass Ale [featured]: an amber glory that surpasseth all understanding and which is transcendently magnificent in flavour [you can tell I'm a fan]. Once, this beautiful product of the brewers' art was widely available around here in a large number of free-houses and hotels, and at least half a dozen pubs in Bangor alone once served it; and where, now, there are fewer than a dozen working pubs left there at all, and definitely no Bass to be seen between them. There were once over a hundred pubs in Bangor. As far as I can tell from my bibulous peregrinations, The Bull is sadly the last venue in the area to sell, and most importantly keep well, the beer with the three-pointed trademark - the oldest trademark in the UK, if not the world - which is a sad reflection of the parlous state of the UK's brewing and hospitality industry.

Most any other country in Europe would have cherished the heritage of such a unique institution, but not the UK, oh, no: we just sell everything off to the highest bidder around here, and sod working class culture. In fact, the closest thing to a good, old-fashioned boozer I came across when so many were closing their doors in the early noughties, was in Aarhus, in Denmark, where it was a fashionable style of venue at the time, right down to dartboards and beermats. Further cruel irony is that the Bass brand and its trademark are now owned by InBev [Belgium], the brewing rights owned by Molson Coors [Canadian-American], with the actual brewing undertaken by onetime Bass competitor, Marstons. The only consolation is that the stuff is brewed by the same method with the same water, and it has to be said, to much the same standard. But does everything we do or make have to be corporatised and sold down the road? Really, I do despair sometimes...