Tuesday 9 November 2010

Amarcord La Volpina

Whilst I was perusing the beers in the shop at the world's best petrol station I spied some from Italy that caught my eye, like this one for example. 

Appealing though it looked nice it cost about nine quid a bottle, so bollocks to that. Looking further I found some Amarcord beers that were a bit more sensibly priced.

La Volpina reassuringly had the words 'Strong Pale Ale' on the label in English, which sounded right up my street.

When I've been in Italy I've pretty much stuck to imported German wheat beers so an Italian ale sounded quite interesting. Sadly it was a bit rubbish. 

At 6.5% ABV it was I was expecting something I could get my teeth into but it turned out to be quite thin without much in the way of hops. A bit sweet and not much else really.

The taste did remind me of a beer I'd picked up in a supermarket in Italy though: Courage Bulldog. I was excited when I saw it there, as despite having been to more Courage pubs than is good for you I'd never heard of it back home. At least as far as beer goes though, sweet and thin doesn't really do it for me so the excitement was short lived. I wouldn't be surprised if La Volpina is based on Bulldog: an Italian beer based on a British beer brewed for export to Italy. It doesn't even sound appealing does it? And it wasn't.

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