Trappists speak out against 'imposter' beers

The brewing monks don't want their names taken in vain, writes Keith Nuthall

CISTERCIAN monks who brew beer in Belgium and the Netherlands have formed an International Trappist Association to protect the good name of their products in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

The monasteries have traditionally brewed to fulfil a sacred duty of self-sufficiency, but their output has become popular worldwide, with bottles of Chimay, Orval and La Trappe being highly prized by beer buffs. As a result, small secular breweries have realised that there is profit in marketing their own beers as Trappist, which has upset the abbots of the six brewing monasteries. They fear that the term "Trappist" could become known as a commercial brand rather than a religious name, and have banded together to stop such irreverence.

In Belgium, breweries have paid Benedictine and Norbertine communities for the right to put the name of their monastery on a beer label. But the Cistercians, a stricter order whose rules famously enjoin silence upon monks, refuse to consider such licensing. "You cannot make Orval from outside the monastery. If the monastic life stops, then the beer stops too. We don't consider Trappist beer a style: it's a provenance," said a spokesman for the order.

The new association, however, will adopt a rigorously commercial approach to defending the name of Trappist beer. It has developed a trademark, a black hexagon containing the words "Authentic Trappist Product", which will be used by Orval, Rochefort, Scourmont-Chimay, Westmalle, Westvleteren and Koningshoeven monasteries. Orval has appointed a marketing manager, Francois de Harenne, who says the trademark is "not a logo of quality", adding: "I'm happy if the consumer considers it as such, but the real aim is a sign saying the beer comes from a Trappist monastery."

Legal action is being threatened to prevent secular brewers passing off their beers as monastic. The association has contacted offenders in the US, France and Japan and asked them to change their labelling, but so far lawyers have been instructed only once - against the Nieuw Belgian Brewery Co of Denver, Colorado, which settled out of court. The association has even set up a Web site, http://titan.glo.be/trappist, and is scouring the Internet for brewers who dress their beer in monks' habits.

Orval has developed trading links with the rest of Europe, the US and Japan, where it has taken pains to ensure that its beer is drunk in the correct monastery glass and served at the right temperature. Nonetheless, the association is anxious to avoid being seen as a global corporation in the making, with dubious monastic ethics matching those of the monk in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, who spent more time on hunting and revelry than in prayer. It stresses that brewing profits cover basic monastery costs and equipment, with the remainder going to charity.

"Our monks live from the breweries and through the breweries, but they are not living for the brewing," said Anneke Benoit, a spokeswoman for Westmalle and Westvleteren. "The first thing that they have to do is to pray and look for God."