The Ultimate Beer Run in the Czech Republic Roland Schlager for The New York TimesInside the Budweiser Budvar bottling plant . By EVAN RAILPublished : August 6 , 2006 IN the jagged Jizera Mountains of the northern Czech Republic , the village of Stary Harcov seems an unlikely place for an epicurean pilgrimage . Driving through a dark forest on a linden - lined lane barely wide enough for a single Skoda , I approached a row of timber - framed houses that felt as idyllic and lazy as a Sierra Nevada ski town in midsummer . The only sound was the buzzing of insects from a nearby meadow . But as the sun set , a crowd formed outside a barnlike family house , taking seats at three roughhewn picnic tables in the front yard . Dressed in T - shirts and plumbers ’ coveralls , they lined up at a small window , fetching half - liters of Vendelin , a honey - colored lager , as if it were liquid gold , even though the price of 15 koruna ( roughly $. 70 ) was only about half the usual rate for a Czech beer . Why travel all this way , near the borders of Poland and Germany , for a cold one ? For starters , the beer is outstanding , with an unusually complex aroma : a bouquet of apricot blossoms with a note of fresh - baked bread , like fruit jam on sourdough toast . In the mouth , the taste is rich and sugary followed by a long , crisp finish . But more importantly , this is the only place where you can sip this particular Czech lager . Brewed in small batches in a tumbledown shed by the owner and namesake , Vendelin Krkoska , the beer has a distribution zone of about two mountain meadows . It is available nowhere else , and nothing else I ’ ve ever tasted is quite like it . “ Of all the lager beers , Czech beers are certainly the most unchanged , ” said Garrett Oliver , the brewmaster and author of “ The Brewmaster ’ s Table , ” speaking via phone from his office at Brooklyn Brewery . “ And when you go back there , you go back to the original flavors . ” Around Europe , a handful of beer trails have already emerged , like the lambic breweries of the Senne Valley in Belgium , the seven Trappist monastery breweries of Belgium and the Netherlands , and the dozen or so Kölsch beer makers of Cologne . But the Czech lands are , in some ways , the birthplace of modern beer making , with a brewing history that dates back more than a millennium . Today there are some 450 Czech beers made by about 100 breweries , ranging from golden Pilsners to black , Baltic - style porters . It is also the beer - drinking capital : Czechs consume more beer than any other country in the world — more than 320 pints annually for every man , woman and child . 출처 : new york times