Opinion: A national blackout

The Society Independent Brewers Associations (SIBA) Conference in York last week showed a sector that was brimming with confidence. Despite the challenges facing the industry, small brewers now know they have found themselves a very big and lucrative niche in the market.

But no one wants to write about them. Search the nationals on a Saturday or Sunday and positive writing about beer is non-existent.

PR Rupert Ponsonby did some sterling work two years ago getting renowned wine writers like Jancis Robinson to visit Michel Roux's restaurant La Gavroche for a carefully matched beer and food dinner. The resulting press was very favourable. But there were no follow-ups. In hindsight, their reviews read like the diary of a road trip to spend time with the natives to try some of this "interesting stuff called beer".

Talking on the panel debate at the SIBA Conference beer writer Roger Protz talked of the time in the mid-1990s he was called by The Guardian and told that his weekly beer column was to be stopped. "Beer," he was told, "has had its day".

Beer has, for some reason, been ghettoised in the pages of the national press. And what does that say to hard working licensees who spend long hours ensuring the perfectly brewed beer they buy is equally well served? I think it says: "Who cares?".

Broadcaster Oz Clarke was in attendance at the conference. He was challenged by Peter Amor, chairman of SIBA, to go on a trip with his compadre James May and do for beer what they have done for wine with their Big Wine Adventure. Funnily we are all still waiting for an answer from Oz.