Miller Brewing Co.’s distributor meetings were only a little less extravagant. I remember one in New Orleans. They recreated Mardi Gras and put us on floats that glided down Bourbon Street as we hurled beads at startled tourists. It wasn’t Mardi Gras, so you can understand their confusion, but that doesn’t stop a big brewery from making it Mardi Gras for its distributors. I recall one feature the floats didn’t have was stopping, as I suspect the driver was deaf, so to disembark we had to leap off in the direction of bushes and tuck into a roll.
Other conventions didn’t go so well. There was the time August Busch IV arrived late to speak at a legislative conference in Washington, DC. He finally took the stage, slurred a few words about partnership and family, gave a nod and a wink to the good senator from Missouri in attendance, dropped his microphone, finally got the hook from his handlers. Cold medicine the culprit there, you see.
Or the time I was verbally attacked in a gondola in Vail at a Beer Institute meeting by several Heineken execs for something I had written. Or the time I was harassed in Aspen at the Caribou Club by every distiller in the room for suggesting that Europeans don’t understand our system of alcohol regulation. Or the time I showed up at a Miller meeting wearing a branded Fat Tire jacket (that’s not so bad. Miller chief Norman Adami actually asked if he could have it, and wore it the rest of the convention). Or when I showed up at an A-B meeting a week early and wondered why nobody recognized me at the hotel bar. One time at a Coors convention in Houston, the tall Pete Coors knocked his head so hard on the door jamb in his hotel room that he emerged the next day with a gash on his head.
Diageo-Guinness USA put me in a Cliff Clavin postal service uniform and allowed me to heckle executives from a makeshift bar on the stage (drinking Guinness the entire time). That was weird, but fun. Yes, I am not above being a monkey on a chain.
And I don’t mind being the scapegoat. I’ve occasionally been harangued at meetings from the stage by brewery executives who perhaps didn’t know I was in the audience—or more likely they did but didn’t care. It’s usually execs at companies whose brands aren’t doing so hot or have a legal conflict going on with one or more of their distributors. It’s a game of blame the messenger. “Don’t believe a word that no good SOB hack Harry Schuhmacher writes about” XYX issue plaguing brewer. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Well, that’s actually probably true. But regardless, I don’t mind playing the villain. It used to bother me, but like most things that don’t matter, I grew out of it. It’s the one benefit of getting older—as you get closer to death, other people’s business issues cease to matter, and the things that used to distress or terrify you suddenly and inexplicably become funny. Besides, playing the straw man for an entire industry is an important and well-paying job. The job was open and I stepped into the breach. As long as they renew their subscriptions, I’ll be Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun and the Wicked Witches (of the East and the West) all rolled into one. Learning to have a rhinoceros hide is important in any career. (There’s a little nugget of wisdom for you young people reading this meandering column. Free of charge. Don’t mention it, really.)
Ten years ago I decided we didn’t have quite enough meetings in the beer industry, because we only had 50 a year and that left two weeks of having nothing to do, twiddling our thumbs. So I started my own beer conference, called the Beer Summit. And we’ve had our share of moments. Most recently, in fact at our Summit last week, Tony Magee of Lagunitas Brewing dropped about five F-Bombs and managed in his 30-minute allotted time to insult almost every other brewer in the room. Very efficient use of time, actually. It was fantastic. Even August IV would be impressed. You gotta love that. Now that August IV is retired, I’m happy to report that we have new characters in the craft beer world to keep the industry entertained for many years to come.
