{"id":48,"date":"2010-01-24T22:10:18","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T04:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tombedell.com\/?p=48"},"modified":"2023-01-07T13:02:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-07T19:02:12","slug":"tempest-in-a-brewpot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/golf\/lifestyle\/48\/tempest-in-a-brewpot","title":{"rendered":"Tempest in a Brewpot"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Banner from Rock Art’s original brewery<\/p><\/div>\n

[Jan. 24, 2010]–<\/em> What is the sound of a paradigm shifting? To Matt Nadeau of Rock Art Brewery in Morrisville, Vermont, it sounds like a rising collective voice that gives Power to the People in the struggle against Corporate America.<\/p>\n

And if that sounds a little like an editorial cartoon, it\u2019s only because the situation Nadeau found himself in last September was cartoonish, in a noir sort of way.<\/p>\n

That was the day he received a cease-and-desist letter from the Hansen Natural Corporation, makers of Monster energy drinks, telling him to stop brewing one of his beers, a whopper of a barleywine named Vermonster.<\/p>\n

Nadeau\u2019s first unsurprising reaction was, Huh?<\/p>\n

His second was to contact trademark lawyers, who basically told him the same thing–Hansen probably didn\u2019t have a legal leg to stand on, but since it will take in an estimated $1.1 billion in revenues in 2009, the Corona, California company could certainly win a protracted legal war of attrition over Rock Art, which will brew an estimated 3,000-3,500 barrels of beer this year, a microbrewery by any measure.<\/p>\n

So Nadeau\u2019s next reaction was, Hmm.<\/p>\n

Nadeau, 43, is a Montpelier native. He and his wife, Renee, met at Johnson State College, where they graduated in 1989. (They were given Outstanding Alumni Awards in 2009.) Matt began homebrewing in 1994, shortly after the couple returned from years of living and working in Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cMatt was absolutely enthralled with brewing,\u201d said Renee. \u201cHe read everything about it he could lay his hands on. He opened a brewing supply store mainly to save on his own brewing expenses.\u201d (And so he wouldn\u2019t have to drive an hour there and back to what was then the nearest supply shop.) \u201cWhen he\u2019d finally made more beer than we could hope to drink, we went professional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Matt and Renee Nadeau<\/p><\/div>\n

Rock Art brewed about 40 barrels of beer in 1997, not a lot more in 1998, said Matt Nadeau, since the brewery was still in the basement of the couple\u2019s house in Johnson, as it would be for the first four years of its existence.<\/p>\n

Since 2001 it\u2019s been housed in a warehouse at the back of a side street in Morrisville, with a small tasting room and store, gradually increasing the portfolio of beers (upwards of 25 different brew recipes) and with a small crew of employees, brewing twice a week.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In 2006, preparing to mark the company\u2019s tenth year with a special brew, Nadeau came up with Vermonster, named after the mythical creature with one set of legs longer than the other, thereby enabling it to walk level in Vermont\u2019s hills. Nadeau trademarked the name, which no doubt lit Hansen\u2019s fuse.<\/p>\n

Available in 22-ounce bottles, the Vermonster label has a photo of an autumnal farm scene, as well as the brewery logo, the dancing, flute-playing Kokopelli, common to southwestern petroglyphs.<\/p>\n

Made with six different malts and five varieties of hops, the Vermonster earns its name as a big beer, thick, sweet and viscous, aggressively hopped (100 IBUs–international bittering units) and taking no prisoners at 10% abv (alcohol by volume). It\u2019s a very tasty beer, but any energy derived from drinking it is likely to be illusory.<\/p>\n

And any chance of mixing it up with a can of caffeinated Monster, with its creepy M indicated by three snakelike lines, is downright hallucinatory. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont put it well when he joined his voice to the collective and wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Hansen company\u2019s board of directors, Rodney C. Sacks in October 20, noting that, \u201c\u2026any normal person would find your claim preposterous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after the Vermonster story began to hit traditional media outlets, it went viral on the social media, exponentially multiplying, first through e-mail from the brewery to its mailing list. That prompted some beverage distributors to pull Monster from its shelves.<\/p>\n

A YouTube video<\/a> made gratis by the Green River Pictures of Burlington showed Matt Nadeau laying out the David versus Goliath storyline, and saying he couldn\u2019t give in, that there was a principle at stake.<\/p>\n

The reactions were immediate–trending topics on Twitter (marked by hashtags like #IsupportRockArt, #monsterboycott or #boycottmonster), postings and repostings of the video on Facebook. Outrage was the general ambiance, the commonly succinct message to Hansen: \u201cGFY!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cIt was a combination of factors that just snowballed,\u201d said Nadeau. \u201cCraft beer drinkers are an enthusiastic and passionate crowd, and our brothers and sisters in the craft beer drinking world really came through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hansen, meanwhile, was having the opposite, no doubt stunned, reaction, looking for all the world like a real monster of avaricious corporate greed. Stonewalling didn\u2019t help. I called the company for a comment and was told a statement would be e-mailed to me. It never came. I called again and requested the statement again. That one never came, either.<\/p>\n

We reached the height of absurdity when I asked a company representative if Hansen\u2019s was publicly held.<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cWe have no comment on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huh? \u201cYou can\u2019t even tell me if it\u2019s a publicly held company, on the stock exchange?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is publicly held, yes,\u201d she finally admitted, but it certainly showed that the company was jittery. The chances were good that someone, somewhere in a Hansen office, had received a monster dressing down, if not outright dismissal, for one of the most bonehead moves in recent marketing history–grossly miscalculating the effect of trying to squelch a little guy, one who proved not so little.<\/p>\n

Though gratified by the overwhelming positive response and publicity, Nadeau still characterized the entire debacle as a hassle: \u201cIt\u2019s kept me from attending to my business–creating, making and selling beers. Before all this began I had interest from distributors in southern New Jersey and from Florida, but I simply haven\u2019t been able to focus on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Matt and part of the crew, assistant brewers Andrea Muhlfelder and Zeb Maxfield<\/p><\/div>\n

Maybe now he can. Hansen threw in the white towel in late October. Though the details were not made crystal clear, the gist was that Rock Art could keep brewing Vermonster, while agreeing never to go into the energy drink market, which it had never intended to do in the first place.<\/p>\n

Then the social media went wild in declaring victory, and Nadeau proclaimed that power had been returned to the people. (He elaborated in a second YouTube video<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

He said he hoped the momentum at hand might prove useful for other small businesses: \u201cWe need to even the playing field or create some kind of way to prevent this type of stuff; maybe when some of the larger issues now confronting them pass, legislators will have a moment in which to tackle this.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy fear is for a small company that\u2019s not making such a sexy product as ours–a dental supply company, say–wouldn\u2019t have the same kind of groundswell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe a catchy call to arms, \u201cRemember Vermonster!\u201d, will rally future troops, who clearly have new weapons at hand, and favorite beverages, to combat corporate injustices.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Other articles mentioning Rock Art:
\nTAP Beer(s) of the Week: Ballast Point Grapefruit Sculpin vs. Rock Art Grapefruit IPA<\/a>
\nThe Session #131: Three Questions<\/a>
\nNational Drink Beer Day and Other Momentous Dates<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To mark Rock Art\u2019s tenth year with a special brew, Nadeau came up with Vermonster, named after the mythical creature with one set of legs longer than the other, thereby enabling it to walk level in Vermont\u2019s hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":56,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[939,18],"tags":[644,951717,628,629,630,631,633],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beer-on-tap","category-lifestyle","tag-vermonster","tag-rock-art-brewery","tag-brewing","tag-beer","tag-ale","tag-microbrewery","tag-vermont"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2010\/01\/Rock-Art-025.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7672,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/7672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}