BOTTLING OUR HISTORY
Microbreweries get creative with their labels
Back in February 1996, when thenprime minister Jean Chrétien impulsively grabbed a protester by the throat, he had no idea he was making history — beer history, that is.
The Shawinigan Handshake, a reference to Chrétien’s hometown, quickly became one of those quirky nicknames for political incidents that generate a few laughs before fading from memory. How many Canadians now recall Pierre Trudeau’s “fuddle-duddle” remark or his infamous Salmon Arm Salute?
But 16 years later, Chrétien’s skirmish was still topical enough for Shawinigan-based microbrewery Trou du Diable to pay homage to its scrappy hometown hero by producing a beer commemorating the event. Shawinigan Handshake, a “pugnacious strong ale,” bears a label featuring a caricature of Chrétien strangling hockey commentator Don Cherry, who had publicly praised the prime minister for his assertiveness at the time.
“You can turn anything political or humorous,” said Isaac Tremblay, Trou du Diable’s president and director of business development, in a recent interview. “All of our products have some sort of pun or double entendre in their name or on their label. It gives our beers personality.” Novelty beers are nothing new. In 1977, Americans got a taste of the short-lived Billy Beer, named for and promoted by then-president Jimmy Carter’s brother, whose main claim to fame was his love for the suds. Even Homer Simpson’s beloved Duff Beer has transcended the fictional TV realm to become a real-life product — despite the refusal of Simpsons creator Matt Groening to endorse it, and several lawsuits launched by 20th Century Fox.
But in Quebec, where supermarket beer shelves are crowded with a colourful array of local ales, lagers and stouts — mostly produced by small, independent microbreweries — local flavour takes on a whole new meaning when it comes to branding. Creativity counts in this crowded, highly competitive market, but no one said you can’t have fun with it at the same time. “As a small brewery, we’re free to do that sort of thing,” said master brewer Jean-François Gravel, co-founder of Dieu du Ciel!, based in Montreal and St-Jérôme.
As the company name implies, Dieu du Ciel! first tapped into Quebec’s Roman Catholic heritage. “But slowly we wanted to use the visibility we had to also talk about some social and historical things,” Gravel told the Montreal Gazette. One example is a beer named Grande Noirceur, a tongue-incheek swipe at those pre-Quiet Revolution days when the Church and Premier Maurice Duplessis’s Union Nationale party ruled the province during what is now known as La Grande Noirceur (Great Darkness). And what better name for a dark stout — complete with a label depicting a giant Duplessis as a sinister puppet master surrounded by towering church steeples, manipulating working-class Quebecers.
“We reach out mostly to younger people who are well-educated,” said Gravel, “but sometimes, as with Grande Noirceur, we have to explain to people what it means. Young people in Quebec are not always aware of this part of our history. I believe it’s also a good thing to remember some of the darker times we’ve had.”
But most labels need little explanation. Montreal’s current 375th birthday celebrations have generated plenty of controversy so far, and that gave Brasseurs du Monde an ideal opportunity to produce and promote Célébrante 375. The spirit of inclusion that is supposed to mark the city’s yearlong party figures in the beer’s marketing strategy, as 25 cents per every bottle sold is being donated to Promis, a Montreal-based organization that helps immigrants and refugees in Quebec.
And in Saguenay, the Hopera microbrewery recently toasted long-serving Mayor Jean Tremblay’s political career with PourToi-Jean, a strong, dark beer so popular with local residents that it quickly sold out its initial batch of 2,000 bottles.
Although Chrétien and Duplessis are about as far as most microbreweries care to tread politically, Tremblay and Gravel are not alone when it comes to mining Quebec history and culture for their ideas. Based in history-rich Chambly, Unibroue markets more than a dozen beers with themes straight out of pre-Confederation Quebec.
The label of their triple wheat beer Don de Dieu, for example, shows Samuel de Champlain’s famous galleon being greeted by a small fleet of canoes bearing friendly natives.
Unibroue also produces La Maudite (you can’t get more Québécois than that!), the first beer with an 8-per-cent alcohol content to be sold in grocery stores.
The beer inspired a marketing strategy based around making a deal with the devil, illustrated by a label featuring la Chasse-galerie — the flying canoe of Quebec folklore made famous by one-time Montreal mayor Honoré Beaugrand's 1891 tale of voyageurs who make a demonic pact.
La Fin du Monde, one of Unibroue's most popular products, is a multi-award-winning beer that is brewed and refermented in the bottle. It combines a simple premise with an equally simple label — a map of Quebec — the idea being that the early French explorers initially believed they had reached the end of the world when they landed in North America.
Similarly, Raftman is Unibroue's tribute to the lumberjacks who worked along Quebec's rivers. These men loved their beer and whisky, both of which are produced with malted barley, so this “peat-smoked whisky malt ale” blends both flavours.
For Trou du Diable's Tremblay, fun is part of the marketing process, and sometimes the ideas can get pretty outlandish. He describes Dubaï Pillée, a double IPA (brewed with double the amount of hops) as a very bad pun. An “extra strong invasive beer,” it combines two very different themes, based on the experience of one of Tremblay's friends.
“He went to Dubai, not realizing it's a dry city,” he recalled. “He wasn't used to not having alcohol around.” Inspired by the B-movie science-fiction genre of the 1950s, they came up with the premise that Dubai had been invaded by aliens, who looted all the beer. The label depicts an alien riding a camel amid a flying saucer attack, while the ale itself reflects its Middle East inspiration with hints of apricot, mango and passion fruit.
Much like the way Unibroue pays homage to hometown Chambly with its products, Trou du Diable often waves the flag for Shawinigan. For instance, an “enlightened beer” is named for local luminary John Edward Aldred, the American utilities executive who was director of the Shawinigan Water and Power Company from 1909 to 1933 and is credited with putting Shawinigan on the map.
But Shawinigan Handshake is the company's most overt political statement, and Tremblay said they had Chrétien's full support, even when the new product was still only available on tap. “One day he called me and asked for a few bottles for Christmas. I had to say, 'Monsieur Chrétien, that's not how beer works — you might have it for Easter.' (One must factor in the time it takes to brew, then bottle the beer.) He said, 'Okay, let's do it — whenever it's ready, I'd like to
Some people don’t always agree with what we do, but debate is never a bad thing ... We do it with respect. We are aware of some dangers in doing that, but so far it’s been pretty good, and I think most of our clientele agrees with it.
have that beer in bottles'."
During the lengthy brewingand-bottling process that followed, Tremblay and his team came up with a creative idea for the label. The original image depicted the former prime minister choking the devil, but Chrétien insisted that he wanted to be depicted choking Don Cherry. “I told Monsieur Chrétien I needed a release from Cherry, but he said, 'No, you don't need a release because he's a public figure'," Tremblay recalled. “He said, 'Trust me, I'm a lawyer,' but I don't trust lawyers!”
So Chrétien called Cherry directly, and the legal rights were quickly cleared.
For Gravel, social commentary through beer labels is a great way of encouraging debate — as long as it's done tastefully.
“Some people don't always agree with what we do, but debate is never a bad thing,” he said. “We do it with respect. We are aware of some dangers in doing that, but so far it's been pretty good, and I think most of our clientele agrees with it.”
But all the fun labels aside, Tremblay and Gravel both emphasize that it's what's inside their bottles that really counts.
“People like the fact that we do a different type of marketing than most other businesses,” Gravel said. “But our business is doing really well because the beer is good.”
“Of course we don't take ourselves seriously,” Tremblay said. “But we take our beer very seriously.”