My new column at LouisvilleBeer.com: "How many furlongs to Leuven?"

It's a major rewrite of something I posted here previously, and I trust, a good deal more confrontational than the first time.

Let’s face it: Subway’s new Italian sandwich collection is more authentically local (in a vaguely tri-colored Neopolitan, fake Gucci, prosciutto gangsta sense of genuine) than Churchill Downs’ fiscal embrace of AB-InBev’s “classic Belgian lager."

How many furlongs to Leuven?

Posted by Roger Baylor in Baylor on Beer | 0 comments

I freely admit to getting no kick out of juleps. Horse pimps don’t thrill me at all, and the fireworks during Flatulence Over Louisville are an excellent annual pretext to skip town for somewhere that’s both quiet and civilized by comparison, and which has craft beer readily available to wash away the bad taste of the air show’s martial glorification of pure garishness.

Nowadays the year-round availability of locally-brewed beer in Louisville is something we take for granted, but unfortunately, the Kentucky Derby isn’t really about anything other than thoroughbred horses, gamblers and maybe the Ohio River filled with bourbon – as long as you keep that accursed mint out of it, and take it neat, the way your personal deity intended.

If it's Stella, it means that Churchill Downs does not give a flying **** about local-anything.

So why give a **** about Churchill Downs?

With all due credit to Sara "Bar Belle" Havens (her complete LEO story is reprinted below), here's the other side of my writing assignment for Food and Dining Magazine's next quarterly issue, May/June/July, which is to be released just prior to the Kentucky Derby.

My job? Inform the magazine's readers, many of whom will be visitors from out of town, about the nature and whereabouts of Louisville's craft breweries. Included are bits of recent history, as in this brief preview.

The Kentucky Derby has taken place right here in Louisville every year since 1875. From 1979 through 1992, there was no locally brewed beer to celebrate the Run for the Roses, but when Sea Hero captured the race in 1993, a few hardy and pioneering microbrew fans could be found drinking Silo Red Rock Ale. Later that fall, Bluegrass Brewing Company was founded, and there Louisville’s present-day craft beer story really begins.

Amid the usual fanfare surrounding Derby "tradition", let's put it this way. Subway's new Italian Collection is more authentically local in a Naples sense of genuine than anything Churchill Downs manages with its exaltation of AB-Inbev's "classic" Belgian lager (lager just isn't a classic Belgian style, is it?) as the beneficiary of soulless sponsorship dollars, all of which happily reinforces my usual bilious point: It should have been AB-Inbev's Goose Island, not AB-Inbev's Stella. At least Goose Island was once legit craft before its big-buck absorption, and Chicago's considerably far closer as a source than Leuven.

Stella named Derby’s official beer

Stella Artois has been named the “official beer sponsor” of Churchill Downs, Oaks and Derby. According to the press release, “Churchill Downs Racetrack today announced a multi-year partnership, naming the world’s best-selling Belgian beer Stella Artois as ‘The Official Beer Sponsor of Churchill Downs, the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby.’ While attending this year’s Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks, fans will be able to experience classic Belgian lager Stella Artois and its iconic Chalice, which will feature the Kentucky Derby 138 logo. Continuing its affiliation with Churchill Downs, Stella Artois also will serve as the presenting sponsor of “Opening Night” and four “Downs After Dark” nighttime events in 2012.”

I’m not a big fan of Stella, but I suppose it’s better than PBR or something. I will stick to the Mint Juleps.

Reclaiming the horse racing biz with cheap, bad beer from multinational swill merchants.

Rick at The 'Ville Voice blog pointed to this story:

Cheap Beer — Is it enough to get you back to the track for night racing? [Churchill Downs]

The horse racing business in Kentucky is struggling, and the demographic for racing at places like Churchill Downs is shrinking. The most recent Kentucky General Assembly has spent time considering these issues in the context of competition from Indiana casinos and other vestiges of entertainment in surrounding states.

The track recently unveiled its first-ever night racing, and opening night was far busier than expected. The track apologized and vowed to do a better job by including "cheap beer" and shorter lines, and last night, the big promotional item was dollar Budweiser Selects.

So, to prove the importance of Churchill Downs to the local/state economy, the track's concessionaire features cheap beer from a multi-national brewing company headquartered in Belgium.

That makes sense, doesn't it?

Three things I learned during the past week.

Better stated, it's three things I already knew, but permitted a measure of reinforcment in my mind.

When the best beer available in the area that is billed as Millionaire’s Row is Heineken, and it is served in a can, it’s obvious that people don’t go to Churchill Downs to drink good beer. Or, for that matter, any casino.

The dialect spoken by locals isn’t German, and most Bavarian beer halls offer neither hamburgers nor ESPN on television, but Newport’s Hofbrauhaus is as authentic as might be hoped given the many differences in pork production between Kentucky and Franconia. The Weizenbock was brilliant.

The Thomas Family Winery in Madison is responsible for great wine, cider and even Sack (a variety of sherry), and even better, the Celtic ambience of its tasting room provides a contrarian’s favored change of pace from the usual winery chic.