Emmaus, Pennsylvania is a pint-sized town (of just over 11,000) a few miles south of Allentown and about 45 miles from Philadelphia. It’s a seemingly unlikely place for a beer store of this magnitude, but there it is. Tucked away on Main Street in Emmaus is Shangy’s, one of the best beer places in the state. (Side note: Emmaus is also the home of John Hansell’s fine Malt Advocate magazine.)

Started in 1980 by the Hadian family, their son Nima is now at the helm and the 35,000 square foot store carries over 3,000 brands, about double what the average BevMo did when I was there and three to four times the average BevMo store now. And Pennsylvania is a case state which, for those of you unfamiliar with that curious institution, means you can only buy beer by the case. This makes getting customers to take a chance on a new beer very difficult, but Pennsylvania’s liquor laws and state agencies seem to care very little about how its citizens are affected. I grew up there and I can tell you the system is messed up beyond belief and should be overhauled. Every state has its own set of peculiarities when it comes to alcohol laws, but Dutch Wonderland (my personal name for the state) got more than its fair share.

But Shangy’s managed to prosper in that environment for a number of reasons, not least of which is that they honestly care about the beer they’re selling. The word “Shangy,” by the way means “happy” in Nima’s native Farsi language, and it is his father’s nickname.
 

Inside Shangy’s during a trip I took there several years ago during a trip home.

Aisles and aisles of cases of beer at Shangy’s.
 

For the past decade, one of the many beers Shangy’s has done well promoting is Hoegaarden, a wit or white beer created by Pierre Celis in the 1960s when he single-handedly resurrected the style. Over time they have become the largest Hoegaarden wholesaler nationwide, moving as many 2,000 kegs each month. Hoegaarden is owned now by InBev, the world’s largest beer company (by volume of beer sold), with such brands as Beck’s, Brahma, Franziskaner, Labatt’s, Stella Artois, St. Pauli Girl, among more then 75 other local and national brands. They recently sold the Rolling Rock brand to Anheuser-Busch. Since InBev was formed by a merger in 2004, they have enjoyed a 14% share of the total world beer market.
 

 
In 1998, Shangy’s settled a lawsuit that “affirmed that Shangy’s was the exclusive wholesale distributor of Labatt products in 17 Pennsylvania counties,” which at the time included Hoegaarden. But with the 2004 merger, Labatt became an InBev subsidiary. Now Shangy’s contends that InBev, who recently gave distribution rights to another of its brands, Stella Artois, to a different beer distributor thus violating the eight-year old agreement. Shangy’s filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia this month seeking monetary damages along with a “court order compelling InBev to abide by the terms of the 1998 agreement.”

As we all know but few will say, “Hadian, who takes glee in ridiculing the mass-market beers, warns that consolidation will ultimately reduce the number of specialty brews on the market. Why? Because wholesalers will inevitably concentrate on selling mass-market, high-volume brands and neglect the craft brews, reducing their chances of survival, he says.”

I’m sure we’ll hear much more about this case as it proceeds. For now, there are more details on this story in an AP Story and a more local take by Lehigh Valley’s The Morning Call.