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The image above comes from the Sainsbury’s supermarket in-house magazine for November 1991 and is a great reminder that interesting beer didn’t arrive in Britain in 2010.

Here’s the text that accompanied the product shot under the groansome headline THE BEER WORTH GUARDING:
The new Sainsbury’s Biere de Garde derives its name from the traditional brewing metiiods used at tlie brewery in Benifontaine, in the Nord-pas de Calais region of France. This strong beer, which is made with seven malts, spends six weeks ‘kept’ in special chilled tanks in a locked Garde room while top fermentation takes place. Hence Biere de Garde – ‘kept’ beer.
The design of the bottle, and the label, is a striking blend of the modern and traditional, and the amber beer is, in the words of the buyer: ‘robust, delivering a rich bouquet and an intense full, rounded flavour.’
Biere de Garde is available in 123 stores at £1.79.
Retro Sainsbury’s branding is very cool right now — some of it has aged rather wonderfully — and this Biere de Garde isn’t bad at all.
You can read the whole issue as a PDF via the JS Journal Online pages at the Sainsbury’s Archive, and there’s more on the arrival of ‘world beer’ in Britain in*Brew Britannia, especially on pages 106 to 111.
Artyfacts from the Nyneties #5: Sainsbury’s Bière de Garde, 1991 originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog


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