It is extraordinary that a beer made in a microbrewery in a small South African town is finding favour in the fiercely competitive international beer market dominated by big multi-national brewing companies.
"They were sold out on Zulu Blonde in the top two pubs out of the 900 in the group, in the first three hours," says Richard Chennells, brewer and owner of the George Hotel in Eshowe. The 33-year-old returned from the UK last week, having completed an order to brew Zulu Blonde for the JD Wetherspoon chain of pubs. The beer will be made at the Caledonian brewery in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The story of Zulu Blonde started eight years ago, when Chennells thought selling beer from a microbrewery would be good promotion for the hotel (whose bar he says is situated above SA's first stock exchange, where gold and cattle were traded).
The initial idea was to market Zulu Blonde from a tap sticking out of the rear light of a Land Rover at golf clubs and other venues in Johannesburg, to lure golfers for "beer and golf" weekends in Eshowe. This was successful in attracting "over 1000 guys to play in Eshowe over the last four years" and it continues today, he says.
Zulu Blonde was initially brewed through "trial and error," says Chennells, who studied brewing in the US after a stint working as a merchant banker.
For a while "things started to fizzle" because the next step would normally have been to inject a large amount of capital into the venture and build a large-scale commercial brewery, which Chennells could not do.
Chennells was then invited to participate in the Real Ale Festival in the UK - the biggest festival of its kind in that country - where Zulu Blonde won the award as the top beer of the festival.
During the 2010 Soccer World Cup, JD Wetherspoon approached him to brew beer for the chain, to provide a "South African flavour" at their pubs during the tournament.
Ironically, while Zulu Blonde was doing well in the UK through the soccer event, the hotel in Eshowe struggled because the usual visitors stayed away, and soccer tourists followed the matches in the cities, without driving the 150km northeast of Durban, where Eshowe is located.
Eshowe, once the capital of Zululand, is now a small trading town surrounded by cane, timber and citrus farms, but attracts tourists interested in British and Zulu history, along with birders and a growing number of people seeking butterflies. Eshowe is home to a 350ha indigenous forest.
The exposure from the World Cup saw many substantial new orders being received from places as far afield as Europe, North Africa, Australia and Canada.
At one stage thereafter, Chennells approached SABMiller CEO Graham Mackay for advice on the next step for Zulu Blonde - Mackay also grew up in Eshowe.
"When he [Mackay] said that Zulu Blonde would only ever be a flavour of the week, I decided now the game is really on," he says.
Chennells says discussions are under way in Europe and the US to find a way to tap into the over 50000hl of orders of Zulu Blonde that Chennells estimates are still waiting to be fulfilled.
While the beer can be had at the George Hotel, it is not available in the rest of SA. Chennells says it remains a long-term dream of his to be able to bottle the beer.
"I have been plugging away at this for eight years now.
"If you think you are going to own a microbrewery to make a lot of money from beer, you need to stop right there.
"If you are passionate about your beer, and are prepared to put in the long hours, there's no doubt you will succeed," he says.
Source: Business Day
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