(La Réole) When Véronique and Véronique started making beer in France, they thought they were helping to upset a very masculine world of brewers, only to find that they were simply bringing beer back to its old female roots.
Posted at 11:08 a.m.
“In the collective imagination, beer is more of a drink for men […]which we strongly refute”, laughs Véronique Verisson, 49, co-founder of There’s a witch in my beer, a small brewery in the town of La Réole, in the south-west of France.
“We are just two women who loved beer and wanted to do something ourselves,” adds her partner Véronique Lanceron, 44.
From the start, the company of those whom everyone here nicknames “Véro and Véro” was categorically feminist: the word is on their business card.
But it is when they begin their research into the world of beer that they discover that they belong to an ancient tradition.
The first recipe listed is written on a piece of clay dating from 1800 BC in ode to Ninkasi, Sumerian goddess of beer.
At the same time, in Mesopotamia, the Code of Hammurabi containing the oldest known laws, including various rules governing brewers and tavern keepers, always refers to “her”.
Brewing beer remained a women’s affair throughout the Middle Ages, when low-alcohol beer was considered nutritious for the whole family.
As the drink could not be stored at the time, the women sold the excess to the neighbors, which gave them a certain financial independence and enabled a few of them to open their own taverns.
But as beer becomes a lucrative business, men take greater control of the industry.
“Completely dumb”
From 13and century, the Catholic Church proclaimed that brewers were amoral and impure temptresses, an argument taken up by the monks who took over the reins of brewing in their abbeys.
“From the moment it brings in money, men” are more interested in it, relates journalist Anaïs LeCoq, who looks back on this story in her book. Maltriarchy: When women crave beer and equality.
“The coup de grace was to kick women out of breweries,” she continues. During the industrial revolution, production was mechanized. Having neither “access to capital, nor to property, nor to higher education”, women “disappear from the profession”.
Things have changed drastically with the recent wave of craft beer and microbreweries, many of which are run by women.
“We see that many young people are interested in our beer and don’t find it at all odd that we are two brewers,” says Véronique Verisson. On the other hand, “there are plenty of things to explain” to an older audience.
They find the advertisements of major beer brands heartbreaking, with semi-naked women and football as their main marketing strategy.
“It’s the same with spirits. Me, I love whiskey, but, in my head, it’s always categorized as a man’s drink, “says the brewer.
“There is no drink man and drink woman,” she adds. “There are plenty of men who feel weakened if they are told that they drink the same thing as women. It’s completely stupid… and annoying. »