Toro!

It's The Session time once again, and this month's host is Ding, who asks Where do you find value? As someone who does a bit of consumer campaigning, it's a very important topic: whether beer is expensive or cheap, the drinker should feel they're getting value for it. With the highly-marketed mainstream beers in the pubs of Ireland, I think that is very much not the case. For a neophile like me, there's another side to the value proposition. Most beers that I drink are new to me, so I've no idea whether they will prove good value or not. What helps is the existence of this blog. I've long come to view it as a way of getting value out of bad beer. I may not have enjoyed drinking it, but being able to compose and publish an account of why, makes it some way worth my while. And, of course, excoriating reviews are much more fun to write than positive ones.

I was expecting some excoriation to be necessary when I came to today's pair of beers.

The ongoing trend for rustic-branded Mediterranean lager rarely troubles these pages. I am bewildered that there still seems to be space in this sector where Heineken's Moretti and Molson Coors's Madrí are slugging it out. Neither beer is any good, but that hasn't stopped other large breweries trying to attract drinkers away from them with similarly-presented fare.

Damm's effort comes from its brewery in Málaga, and is called Victoria Málaga. It's presented in a 66cl bottle and, like Moretti, the label features an old-timey bloke with a hat -- he's a German tourist, apparently, the beer's mascot since the 1950s, before Damm bought and revived it in 2001. It's a quite a dark one; the clear golden colour having a slight tint of coppery red in it. It doesn't look like a cheapie mass-market job.

Not much happens in the aroma, just a vague graininess which is the sort you get from mass-market lager, though the body is fuller than I expected from just 4.8% ABV. There's a proper malt foretaste, thick and bready, with some quite Czech-tasting golden syrup. Alas, it doesn't last long, fading before the beer's other flavour kicks in. That's a mild zinc-like bitter bite, very much the sort you get from old-world hops, and likely German ones. This too is fleeting, and it finishes promptly and cleanly. This shows some of the features of good wholesome lagers, but its industrial nature betrays it. While it doesn't taste cheap or compromised, there's not really enough depth of taste for me to recommend it. It could have been much worse.

And speaking of: Aldi has taken a direct potshot at Madrí by creating an obvious knock-off, called Grande. Given that these, and there are many of them, never bear any resemblance to the beers they're copying, beyond the label, I had no idea what to expect. It's noteworthy that, unlike Madrí, this one is actually brewed in Spain. Again it's a 66cl bottle, and again it's on the darker side: not quite as deep as the previous beer but certainly an alluring amber. It's much thinner and fizzier, however, and drinking them back-to-back really shows up the Victoria as a better beer made to a more flavourful spec. This isn't much lighter at 4.6% ABV but is a world away.

The aroma is quite sugary, but not in a malt-like way, and suggests that the beer might become sweet and cloying. The chance would be a fine thing. On tasting there's almost nothing going on, with the insistent fizz providing white noise where the flavour should be. I let it warm up a little, in the hope that something of interest would emerge, but nothing of interest is on the cards here. There's a slight tang of green apple and brown sugar, hallmarks of lager done on the cheap, but nothing beyond this. Any bite comes from the carbonation rather than hops. It's not unpleasant, but it is extremely basic. Is it an effective substitute for the price-conscious Madrí drinker? Sure, why not?

I remain none the wiser about the Mediterranean lager trend. These beers are quite different from each other, yet both are being pitched at the same segment of beer drinkers. Neither has TV adverts, though, so I guess they'll continue in the ha'penny place, regardless of any individual merits. I'm certainly not planning to buy either one again, but the four paragraphs above mean I got my money's worth from them.