Aug 8, 2016

Jacquie & Michel - A beer with a suspicious label


Dear beer enthusiasts,

It has been a while since my last post... and I have no excuse for that, I have many beer-related stories to post, waiting on a small post-it wall behind my door!! For that, I sincerely apologize.

But sometimes all you need to trigger your creativity and kick you back into posting again is a really good beer or a really unusual and random story. This post was triggered by the second one...

This story starts with a couple of friends visiting the Loire Valley, in France. As usual, my american friend Susan and her French husband Christophe went the extra mile to get me some regional brews. They ransacked beer sections of unaware supermarkets on their way, bravely resisting the will to get Belgian ales and wisely ignoring all mass produced French brands (like Kronenbourg), keeping the sole focus on finding beers that would definitely be new to my collection.

On their rampage, Susan found the following 330ml bottle of a 5.2% alcohol lager beer, under the name of Jacquie & Michel... the label states that this beer was produced specially for the SARL Beer Market, but is a bit suspicious, as it says nothing about the brewery which actually did it

Jacquie and Michel - Find all the clues in the label, your suspicions might be right!

The label brings yet another suspicious statement in French. With my limited ability in that language, I could get something like: "a blond beer which is docile at first but has a strong character, and that it pays tribute to the fans who help to maintain the myth alive"

The translation was confirmed by Christophe, once Susan's French is also a bit limited, but he swears he was not aware of the purchase of this specific beer... Susan confirmed it.

The amount of X's in the logo, together with the lipstick kiss mark under the name of the beer made all of us even more suspicious about the nature of the above mentioned "myth" and its supportive fans. A quick check on the website indicated on the back of the bottle and Voilá! Our suspicions were confirmed.

This is a beer specially made for the fans of an, apparently, famous French porn website.

I say "apparently" because Christophe seemed honest enough when he said he never heard of that site before, and I suspect he would have no reasons to lie about that (call me naive if you will...)

I erased the addresses from the label because I am not here to promote porn sites... The only thing I could promote is the beer, but I have to say that it was actually not a very good beer (I'm trying to be positive here!) just the smell of it reminded me of the mass brews you can find in the US and Brazil, filled up with non-malted cereals (namely corn and rice) to make it cheaper.

I am not 100% sure that this beer contains corn and rice, but the fact that the only thing stated on the ingredients is "contains barley malt", makes me incredibly suspicious that I might be right, once it doesn't necessarily denies my initial assumption. Also, as I learned when I ended up inadvertently visiting a French porn website, my suspicions are not always fruit of pure paranoia or of my nasty, dirty mind.

Thank you, Christophe and Susan, for yet another interesting story for my blog, I promise that all the other 8 bottles you brought me (all much better in taste that this one, I must say) will also get their recognition :)

Cheers!

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