West Germany: Across a Sea of L

Under the towering cast-iron statue of a busty Mädchen who symbolizes Bavaria, Munich crowds gathered at the Theresienwiese fairground last week for the year’s biggest community beer bash, the 16-day Oktoberfest. Dating from the come-everybody wedding reception 155 years ago of Bavaria’s Crown Prince Ludwig, Oktoberfest today is an excuse for games, gourmandising and, among Bavarians, whose per capita annual beer consumption is 218 quarts, for quaffing the amber Märzenbier.* Seven big beer tents steined out Märzenbier last week, but nowhere was it downed faster than at the largest —the Löwenbräu tent, into which 40,000 people a day crowded to hear a 50-piece brass band and watch chesty Westphalian stallions with blue velvet and leather harness and silver nameplates drag in more kegs.

For Monks & Mothers. The many camera-toting tourists who joined the lederhosen-and dirndl-clad Bavarians were welcomed by the Löwenbräu representatives with more than the usual enthusiasm. Reason: 582-year-old Löwenbräu, the largest Bavarian brewery, is pressing exports harder than ever. Its domestic sales are concentrated in Bavaria (well-entrenched regional breweries dominate elsewhere in Germany) and Bavarian consumption is flattening out despite the low cost of a pint bottle of beer (13¢). Löwenbräu’s rising exports to 100 nations now account for 33% of its volume.

The company’s sales of $23 million last year (up 15%) came from a variety of enterprises. Like most German breweries, it owns and leases restaurants and beer halls to make sure that only Lowenbrau—German for “lion’s brew”—is served in them. Löwenbräu is also a Munich Coca-Cola bottler. But beer remains by far the company’s biggest product—26 million gallons this year. It comes in 16 varieties, from a 1.5% light beer for expectant mothers to a heady 6% brew so nourishing that Bavarian monks in the past drank it to supplement their meager diets during Lenten fasts. The company emphasizes beer’s importance by giving each adult worker 68 free bottles weekly. Like his employees, duel-scarred General Director Bernhard Bergdolt, 56, every morning has a 9:30 a.m. “second breakfast” of bread, sausage and the lion’s brew.

Something for Christmas. Half of Bergdolt’s exports go to the U.S., where Löwenbräu is the largest seller among 80 imported beers (having overtaken Heineken in 1963), though the imports together represent less than 1% of all U.S. beer sales. Surveys show that the U.S. Löwenbräu drinker is mainly a city executive earning more than $10,000. “We won’t change the Scotch drinker,” says Importer Dieter Holterbosch, “but we want him to choose Löwenbräu when he has a beer.” As one way to persuade him, Löwenbräu this Christmas will market in the U.S. a blue-and-gold foil-wrapped case of 24 bottles. Americans will thus be able to have their own Decemberfest beside the Christmas tree.

* Meaning “March beer,” because it is brewed in March and ages until the Oktoberfest.