Phoney Peroni

A few weeks ago I was at Aldi's summer drinks press event. Wine mostly, of course, but they had one new (to me) beer in the line-up, an Italian lager which was obviously aiming to be an own-brand answer to Peroni Nastro Azzurro. Rossini matches Peroni's 5.1% ABV and I'm told is brewed by Swinkels, though I didn't know they had an Italian footprint.

On tasting it I was quite impressed. I have an active dislike for Peroni, considering it a cheaply-made lager that has gathered for itself an entirely inappropriate premium status. Rossini, on the other hand, tasted solid and decent, if unexciting. I decided it would be fun to try them blind side-by-side to test my prejudices. Is Rossini actually better?

Two days later I bought a bottle of Rossini in Aldi and a Peroni in Tesco. Unexpectedly, the latter was actually the cheaper of the pair, the 66cl bottle part of a 4-for-€10 while a half-litre of Rossini was €1.99. I had intended to run the tasting as a triangle test but there wasn't much point in the end: one beer was pale yellow with a stack of tight white foam while the other was a darker gold and lost its head quickly. I immediately had a suspicion of which was which.

Pale 'n' frothy was the more aromatic one, showing Saaz-y grass and petrol while the other smelled of nothing much. The paler one was bitterer to taste, but that's not in its favour. There's a sharp and quite harsh plasticky bite on the end, leading on to an unpleasant acrid aftertaste. I'll put my cards on the table now and say this is a nastiness I associate strongly with Peroni.

Supposed Rossini, then, was blander but definitely smoother and more full-bodied. There's a bread or biscuit malt character that made me think of Bavarian helles more than Italian or Dutch pils. The finish was clean and the whole thing very satisfying to drink. Dull helles beats crappy pils any day of the week.

The reveal proved me correct. What have we learned? Well, Peroni is still objectively awful and should never be consumed by anyone anywhere. Peroni purists, however, are unlikely to be swayed by Rossini's superficial similarities: the flavour profile is dramatically different. Asahi shareholders have nothing to fear from it while the drinking public can rejoice that Nastro Azzurro is safely uncloneable.

Finalmente!

There are many epithets that one can attach to Mr Mick Wallace, though one of the ones he made his name on was "Italophile". Enamoured of the Italian way of life on returning from the 1990 World Cup, the construction magnate used his later prosperity to bring a little of it to Dublin. The city's "Italian quarter" is of his making and La Taverna on its southern edge is still his personal property, recent financial and legal woes notwithstanding. It's a centrepiece of the Italian quarter vision and in the boom years Mick would often have lunch here. I know this because I often had lunch here too, and still do. The food is of excellent quality and very reasonably priced, while the wine and olive oil are (I think) imported especially, with an emphasis on the Piedmont region for the former. The beer was... Peroni. As the Italian beer renaissance took wings, I would fume over my Modenese salad that none of the good stuff was coming on the containers from Piedmont, stacked next to the Barbera.

I've no idea what prompted the change earlier this year, but it finally happened: a handful of beers from Birrificio Montegioco in the east of the province, north of Genoa.

Demon Hunter is a dark amber ale of 8% ABV with definite Belgian characteristics, in that it's rather hot and has a good deal of banana ester about it. The aroma has hints of acetone and the finish is acridly bitter. All of these factors made it just too hard going to be enjoyable, for me at least.

The lighter Rurale was much better. It's a little bit pale and a more accessible 5.1% ABV. There's a lovely spicy, perfumed hop nose with some marzipan sweetness. The malt looms large in the flavour, showing masses of caramel and golden syrup. The perfume hops make a comeback next: assertively floral, if that's a thing. A decent bitter smack finishes an end-to-end quality beer experience.

I had no idea what to expect from Bran, only that it's 9% ABV and only comes in a 75cl bottle. That said bottle arrives wrapped in paper doesn't help either. And after drinking it, I'm still not sure what style best fits it. It's jet black and pours out gloopily, with little by way of head. The aroma is a hot and sour combination of alcohol and plums, placing it somewhere on the dark Belgian-style spectrum, but the flavour is all about the chocolate: sweet to begin with, and finishing dryer, with more marzipan in the middle for complexity. That makes it more of a porter to my palate, and a very good one at that. However you want to slice it, this is a very well done beer and exactly the sort of wine substitute that I'd been longing to see at La Taverna.

I have rarely ventured into any of the other members of the Wallace group, but the promise of Montegioco on draught was enough to get me through the doors of Enoteca delle Langhe, situated just behind La Taverna. Rurale was an option but I went for Runa, 4.8% and arriving the colour of spun gold with just a slight haze. There was something off about the aroma, a sort of stale-weissbier rancid banana smell, but it's much better to the taste. First impressions were of a simple witbier, softly wheaty and with a gentle spice. As I got further in, the hops started to come through clearer with a lemongrass and beeswax bite, reminiscent more of an assertive German pils than a Belgian-style wheat beer, with just some background fruit esters suggesting to me that it's warm fermented. A best-of-both-worlds sessionable quencher or complex continental sipper here. The first appearance of a teku glass in the wild in Dublin, too. They're really not very nice to drink from.

And the news is just in that the group's beer offering is due for further expansion very soon, including the arrival of products from one of my top Italian breweries, the sour specialists LoverBeer. That could well move the Wallace group from fun novelty beer stockists to unmissable Dublin icons.

Marks, but few sparks

You'd think by now I'd have got over the fact that multinational supermarkets totally stiff their Irish customers on beer selection, but no: here I go again. Tesco are the worst offenders, but even Lidl offers a much superior beer range 80 miles up the road in the UK.

So I was delighted to see Marks & Spencer had seen some sense and graced the shelves of their Irish stores with three bottled offerings. First up is an Italian lager called Birra D'Oro. It's a rather gassy and bland affair. Slightly dry, but otherwise unworthy of note. I presume they're going for something resembling Nastro Azzurro, not one of the world's great beers, but they've even failed at that. More vapid than vaporetto.

Next is a Belgian witbier, innovatively titled Bière Blanche. It pours a very pale yellow and is not so much cloudy as slightly misty. Bizarrely there's no aroma. The orange zest listed in the ingredients does come through in the flavour in a sort of sherberty way. However, this is a cipher of a witbier. €3 I won't see again.

I figured I would do better with M&S Irish Stout, knowing that it is contract brewed by the Carlow Brewing Company, makers of the excellent O'Hara's. The first thing to confirm my prejudice was the superb head retention. This was followed by a rich, full bitter chocolate and roasted barley flavour. Excellent stuff, but not quite up to the standard of bottled O'Hara's and 20c dearer too. (O'Hara's on draught, incidentally, is nitrogenated: better than Guinness, obviously, but a touch flavourless.)

Of course, the feeling that M&S were looking after us didn't last long, with the announcement of their new range of bottle conditioned beers which have yet to arrive here. Whether they ever will remains to be seen. I'm pessimistic.

And that brings me to my second pet peeve. Birra D'Oro, says the label, is "Brewed in Italy", not "Italia"; Bière Blanche "Brewed in Belgium", not "België/Belgique". Yet for some bizarre reason, the stout is "Brewed in Eire", not Ireland. What's that about, apart from poor spelling?