Wine Country Biking and Cheap Beer
March 9th, 2008 Posted in Beers of the World, Cheap Asia Travel, Cheap Europe Travel, Leffel projects, Travel adventures
If you happen to be near a newsstand this month, pick up a copy of the great drinks magazine Imbibe. I’ve got an essay on the last page about biking around the wine country of the Czech Republic. The story is not online yet (that link is to an old blog post of mine), but I’ll post an Imbibe link down the line if it’s added to their site. It’s a very attractive magazine to see in print though, stylish in a way you can’t duplicate in the pixel world, and is filled with great writing about wine, beer, coffee, tea, and more.
Their ending essay in the previous issue was a story by Joshua Bernstein about traveling across Europe and Central Asia as part of the 8,000-mile Mongol Rally. The theme was near and dear to my heart: the fact that in many countries, beer is cheaper than bottled water. Fittingly, he first learns this in the Czech Republic, where “one-liter water bottles cost about a buck. Half-liters of dependable suds…were equal to a couple of skinny dimes.” So he drank a lot of beer. “I couldn’t live with myself if I bought water that cost more than the beer likely made from the very same water.” Here are some more specifics:
30-cent bottles of Okocim in Poland
45-cent Lacplesis in Latvia
40-cent pints of dark Baltika No. 4 in Moscow
10-cent Derbes Dark in Kazakhstan
15-cent bottles of “refreshingly watery” Skol in Uzbekistan
20-cent bottles of Borgio Gold in Mongolia
Side note: I posted this particular photo here because I also recently found this beer/water phenomenon to hold true with prices in Panama.
One Response to “Wine Country Biking and Cheap Beer”
By Jim on Mar 9, 2008
Maybe the price of beer is always cheaper than water in the hotter countries. Costa Rica beers start from around $0.60 but water is $0.75.
But for healthy drinking why not try fruit juice ‘con leche’?