Alright, it didn’t make the magazine, but it is a “web exclusive” on the Newsweek website. It is an article by Andrew Romano entitled Beer By the Year (thanks to Joe in Florida for sending me the link). The article is about vintage beers and the 25 of them Gramercy Tavern in New York City has added to their menu. It’s great to see Newsweek do a piece on aged beers, though the article suffers from the usual snide disbelief that beer could be worth spending money on and be something beyond a drink for the masses, or as Romano envisions it, an “equal-opportunity inebriator.”

Then there’s this dissmissive description:

This is beer we’re talking about. You know, the stuff shirtless football fans drink from a helmet. Sure, boosters might do well to take a page from wine’s playbook: according to the latest figures from the National Institutes of Health, alcohol consumption from beer (per capita) is down 6 percent since 1992, while “classier” vino is up 17 percent.

A little later in the article Romano grudgingly admits that some beers may benefit from aging but then claims that that’s true only “in theory.” He makes this claim because the final product may not necessarily turn out to be good after all. Why? One explanation is that the aging must be done properly: at the right temperature, in a dark place, etc. Here’s his other reasons.

Brewers, unlike vintners, release their beverages when they’re ready to drink, and aging is an inexact science. Given time, some bottles soar; others sour. With vintage beer, you always run the risk of liking the final draft less than the first.

This makes it sound as if he’s inferring that wine doesn’t have such issues, that aging wine is an exact science. But the exact same risks he brings up are true for wine, as well. First of all, plenty of wines are released too early but just as many are ready to drink, too. And then to age a wine properly, all the same steps involving light, temperature and so on must also be followed for the wine to have benefitted from the aging process.

Many — if not most — of the beers meant to be aged are not released when they’re green, but have in fact been aged for a period of time before being released to the public for further aging. I spoke to Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing and he confirmed that he does age many of his beers either in the tank, barrel or bottle before releasing them to the public, some for a few weeks and some for many months. He wants the flavors to be right and the taste to have mellowed or changed in a positive way before they’re out of his hands.

I don’t quite understand why the author feels the need to qualify aging beer as having unique risks. “Given time,” not every bottle of wine will age well either, so why is he making it sound like aging is a different process for wine and beer?

Happily, Romano doesn’t stick with that tone and for the most part is convinced that vintage beers are worth their higher price tag. Romano and his dinner companion try six vintage beers and like all of them, and love a couple, especially the 1992 Thomas Hardy.

According to the article, Gramercy Tavern “gave beer-by-the-year its big-league, fine-dining debut with a select 25-bottle list of vintage suds from Europe, Japan and North America. The response, says assistant beverage director Kevin Garry, has been ‘amazing’—and it could mean more mainstream acceptance to come. ‘Based on how our guests have reacted, I can totally see vintage beer catching on at other places,’” says Garry, who pairs his bottles with cheeses and desserts. ‘I’d love to see it become the next cool thing in the fine-dining world.’”

As the article ends, Romano can’t resist bad-mouthing beer one more time in his last sentence, which concludes, “[w]e stumble home shortly thereafter.” Let’s see, two men share six bottles of beer. That’s three apiece. And not all were big 750 ml bottles. Thomas Hardy bottles are 11.2 ounces. Yes, some of the beers were strong, but overall not compared to the average wines. Would a wine writer having consumed an equal amount of wine ever claim to have “stumbled” home afterwards? Not in a million years.