Bud. vs. Bud
By George Cerny

This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to brew and age. Our exclusive Beechwood Aging produces a taste, a smoothness, and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price.

Budweiser beer's proud slogan is recited from memory by frat members and bikers, studied by the drunk and morose in the empty hours before dawn as they stare at beer cans. It is printed on all of the millions of bottles and cans of the flagship product of Anheuser-Busch, the world's largest brewery. Some people say that it is a lie.

Three thousand miles away from A-B's home in St. Louis, Mo., the town of Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic claims that it is the true source of the name — but not the recipe — of the world's best-selling beer. Ceske Budejovice — or Budweis — has a beer of its own that cannot be sold in America because its name, "Budvar" is too close to "Budweiser." Ceske Budejovice wants its name back.

The fight over the trademark "Budweiser" — and the words "Bud" and "original" — has sparked decades of negotiation, litigation and bitterness. Who owns a name? Who gets proprietary rights over a tradition? Would a Bud, by any other name, still get you sweetly wasted?

A tale of two breweries

Anheuser-Busch, like Disney and McDonald's, is a classic American story of dedication, efficiency, aggressive marketing, growth and world domination. Adolphus Busch, a young German immigrant, married into control of a struggling brewery in St. Louis to which his father-in-law had loaned money. In 1876, he collaborated with Carl Conrad to create a new beer, which he called Budweiser. By 1901, the brewery had passed 1 million barrels of annual beer production.

	THE VIEW FROM ST. LOUIS Whenever I think of St. Louis, I remember clomping Clydesdales and the intoxicating scent of yeast. At first, I wasn't entirely certain if the trip to the Anheuser-Busch brewery had been proposed in jest. "No, seriously," my friend said, "I've been there half-a-dozen times already." This wasn't a weekend lark for him — it was practically a lifestyle. Sure enough, soon after arriving, we ran into one of my friend's fellow medical students ... [more]

Ceske Budejovice was founded by King Premsl Otakar II in 1265. It has something of a turbulent history of sacks and plagues and other misfortunes (but then every town of any age in Bohemia has a turbulent history). It was given, by royal patent, the right to brew beer, and has been doing so for over 600 years. The current brewery was founded in 1895.

Two ambitious companies with the same name for their main product eventually had to come to terms. Budvar was imported into the United States before Prohibition, and Anheuser-Busch was expanding both in America and overseas. In a 1911 agreement, Anheuser-Busch agreed to keep its name out of Europe and grant the designation of "Original" to the Czechs. But as history was kinder to America than to Czechoslovakia, Budvar was at a disadvantage in further negotiations.

The Czech brewery registered its trademark in the United States in 1937, but in 1938 Western Europe capitulated to the Nazis at Munich, leaving Hitler free to annex Czechoslovakia. In 1939, very much — and very literally — under the gun, Budvar agreed to limit the use of its name in many countries outside Czechoslovakia in exchange for some small financial compensation and to protect its assets.

Anheuser-Busch solidified its place as the largest brewery in the world, while Budvar endured first World War II and then communism. But they kept making beer, and it was still called Budvar. The battle over the name continued throughout, and intensified after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 ended communism and restored the profit motive to Czechoslovakia.

Today, Anheuser-Busch is a multinational empire, "focused," in the word of its Website, "on beer, adventure park entertainment and packaging." It boasts that it is "the world's beer company." Budvar has 560 employees.

Yet Anheuser-Busch has done everything possible to protect itself from its small namesake. The people behind "Bud" would no more let their precious trademark be debased by foreigners than they would let an aquarium name a fish "Shamu" — a name Anheuser-Busch also owns. They have kept Budvar out of the United States for 60 years.

The fight

Every empire, from the Romans to Microsoft, has ways to respond to challenges from smaller entities. The first is denial. Anheuser-Busch's Website details how the company stands for "solid values — family tradition, vision, courage and integrity." But it avoids any mention of the Czech Republic. This is a bit difficult, because while the site will tell you more than you could have ever wanted to know about Busch´s achievements and struggles — how it made ice cream during the dark days of Prohibition, for instance — it skips over any hint of how Adolphus hit on the name "Budweiser".

Another strategy is co-option — winning over the restless natives. In the 1990s, Anheuser-Busch opened the "St. Louis Center" in Ceske Budejovice to impress the townspeople with English lessons, cheap coffee and posters of the St. Louis Arch. "It was the only place in town that wasn't full of cigarette smoke," said Denisa Mylbachová, who hung out there in college before she became Budvar's PR manager. "I remember one time they had a St. Patrick's Day party with Mexican food. Nachos. I don't know why." The St. Louis Center closed a few years ago.

More seriously, Anheuser-Busch attempted to strike a deal with Budvar. Budvar later said, though, that the Americans "began to wage war with a friendly face." Years of negotiations, including a personal visit by A. A. Busch in 1992, went nowhere.

The final option for empires is to send in the legions to sack the province and restore order. Or, in modern terms, lawyer up. Legal action has been taken by one of the companies against the other in some 80 countries, from Scandinavia to the Benelux countries.

Budvar, however, did not give up. Even under communism, the brewery grew and modernized, and this continued after 1989. They have raised annual production since the '80s. Until last year, when it was narrowly edged out by Pilsner Urquell, it was the most exported Czech beer, a remarkable feat considering the legal disputes and that they were denied any access to the large American market.

But that is finally about to change. On March 28, Budvar announced that it had begun to once again, after 60 long years, crack into America. To do this, they are performing a slight, to say nothing of thinly veiled, subterfuge. Don't run to your liquor store and ask for "Budvar." Ask, instead, for "Czechvar."

As Czech Beer Importers, one of three companies introducing Czechvar, puts it, "Only the name has been changed to protect the beer."

Budvar is even more direct in its marketing for Czechvar: "It's really what you think it is."

Rob Neuner, of Czech Beer Importers, worked for five years to get Budvar to agree to the arrangement. "It was no, no, no," he said, "until finally they just broke down."

Despite similar lineages, Czechvar and Bud will have completely differrent markets. Czechvar will be aimed toward the import/micro-brew category, and will be priced like Bass or Anchor Steam. It will probably go for $3-4 a bottle in bars (Bud only goes for that kind of money in strip clubs and airports). Brewed in the Czech Republic and imported to the United States, Czechvar will be available in bars and liquor stores, at least the high-end ones.

Neuner added, "People in the beer business are very, very, excited."

But what does it taste like?

Budvar — wait, I mean "Czechvar" — is, like most Czech beers, crisp and clean tasting. Czechvar is a little more assetive, almost sweet though not at all cloying. It is not one of those micro-brew-festival award winners that is meant to knock you down from the first taste. It holds its taste and smoothness throughout — "Did I really just finish another half-liter?" It is perfectly matched with food — especially spicy meat dishes — barbeque, say, or a good Texas chili.

That is my opinion. To see what others think, I went to Ceske Budejovice to query the locals. To make it a fair experiment, I brought along a six-pack of Anheuser-Busch's "Bud."

For Czechs, brewing has been their triumph, and beer their solace. The Czechs drink more beer per capita than any other people on earth — twice what Americans consume.

To get some idea of how ubiquitous beer is in Czech culture, take a look at the American film adaptation of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The film is astonishingly well made. In a scene where two characters get involved in a discussion in a Prague pub, it looks exactly like a real Czech hostinece. Save for one detail. During the course of the talk, neither man drinks his beer, or orders another one. In real life, this is impossible.

A Czech movie, Miloš Forman's The Fireman's Ball, is much more realistic. During a meeting near the beginning, not one glass stays at the same level from shot to shot. This is not a continuity error. It is drinking, Czech style.

So I had no trouble convincing a group of young people, ranging in age from 18 to 24, to try a few beers. We met in the magnificent baroque square in Ceske Budejovice. St. Louis "Bud" went first.

Understandably, this is not a scientific test — beer, no matter what beer, never tastes as good from a bottle as it does on tap. But nevertheless, their reactions were overwhelming, though polite. "It is not at all aggressive," offered one. Marek, on break from his mandatory army service, said that he would be grateful for it to be included in his rations. Nobody mentioned Beechwood aging.

The Budvar — "Czechvar" — got higher marks. Much higher. "You can see it in our faces," said Lenka, 24, when we drank the local product. "This is real," her brother, Martin, agreed. "It is not in America?"

Not until now.