The Trend in Italy Is to Suds Rather Than Vino

It’s a sultry summer night and the place is packed. Voices and laughter echo under the vaulted ceilings, and cigarette smoke mingles with the humidity.

Sweating waiters plunk foaming mugs of beer down on scarred wooden tables. They stagger through the room under heavy steaming trays of Wurstel, sauerkraut and goulash.

You could be in Germany, but you’re not.

Welcome to Rome, to the Birreria Tempera, one of the oldest and most popular of a growing number of beer halls in the Eternal City.

Welcome, in fact, to Italy, where beer drinking has become chic and beer consumption has nearly doubled over the past decade.

Beer halls-- birrerie-- are cropping up all over Rome, and more and more bars offer not only frosty tankards from the tap but a selection of as many as two dozen types of specialty beers, both domestic and imported.

Shelves Full

Where once it was sometimes hard to find local brands, even small town supermarkets display shelves full of Italian, Irish, German, Belgian and Czechoslovakian beers.

American beers are slated to join them soon.

According to Marco Peroni, spokesman for Italy’s largest brewery, Birra Peroni, the shift toward beer-drinking is due in a large part to a fundamental change in the Italian life style as well as to what he called an “identity crisis” in Italian wines.

That crisis was brought into high relief a year ago by a scandal in which more than a score of people died after drinking cheap wine fabricated out of poisonous methyl alcohol.

“The life style has changed a lot,” Peroni said at the Rome headquarters of the brewery, which, founded in 1846, accounts for about a quarter of beer sales in Italy.

More and more offices and shops stay open through the afternoon, he noted, rather than close for the traditional riposo. “There’s the so-called fast food; people snack at noon for lunch; they no longer go home for a midday meal.”

In addition, he said: “There’s a trend to drink less alcohol, in part due to the environmentalist phenomenon. People want to drink more natural products.

“Above all, beer has overcome the seasonal barrier. Traditionally, beer has been drunk in the summer, as a thirst-quencher. Now, people drink it year-round. It’s a big change in consumer habits.”

The impact is unmistakable.

Italians still drink less beer than other Europeans, but the trend toward beer drinking has made annual consumption jump from 12 to 13 liters per person 10 years ago to 20 to 21 liters today, still a long way below West Germany’s record 150 liters per person or France’s 50 liters.

Wine Intake Plummets

At the same time, annual wine consumption in Italy has plummeted from 110 liters per person in the late 1960s to about 73 liters, a postwar low.

Advertising beer as a healthy, youth-oriented, enjoyable drink has helped the trend. Italy’s 10 main beer producers launched a joint advertising campaign in 1978 with TV commercials featuring one of Italy’s most “in” stars, Renzo Arbore. “Arbore’s got a very youthful image,” Peroni said. “It made a big impression on young people.”

Common Market agreements also made it easier to import beer such as Irish Guinness and Belgian Chimay, and Italian brewers began turning out their own specialty brands, with fancy labels, to compete.

You can get beer in virtually every bar or sidewalk cafe in Rome and in most restaurants and trattorias. Fast-food outlets and bright new sandwich emporiums spotlight beer as the perfect drink for a faster, less traditional life style.

The birrerie, however, remain the real heart of Italy’s beer-drinking culture. They run the gamut from high-tech beer and pizza parlors to traditional German-style beer halls specializing in sauerkraut, Wurstel and similar dishes, with an Italian touch, of course.

Trovaroma, a weekly guide to what’s on in Rome, lists more than 50 birrerie or pubs, and there are many others. Fifteen years ago there were only a handful.

My favorite has long been the Birreria Tempera. It’s on via di San Marcelo, just off Piazza Santi Apostoli near Piazza Venezia and the Trevi Fountain.

Little has changed since I started going there years ago as a student, except that the lunch menu is more extensive, the quality of beer is better and Pippo Rinelli, a waiter who’s been there for 21 years, has put more weight onto his already rotund figure.

Founded in 1906, the Birreria Tempera is family owned by Renato Tempera and his son Fernando. Renato and his brother Giuseppe, who died last year, were almost literally born in the beer hall--their parents worked there and when they died, the two boys were adopted by the original owner, who willed them the establishment in 1952.

It occupies two cavernous, wood-paneled rooms with cream-colored vaulted ceilings decorated with old-fashioned paintings of rustic-style cupids and slogans extolling beer.

“He who drinks beer lives for 100 years,” reads a slogan at the entrance near the big counter behind which waiters draw draft light or dark in three sizes of mugs.

‘Strength and Health’

Other slogans read, “Beer gives strength and health,” “Drink beer in every season,” “Beer nurtures and refreshes.”

At lunchtime, office workers crowd in for quick meals from the extensive, and excellent, cold buffet of salads and cold cuts or dishes such as smoked pork chops or salt cod (bacala) that can be quickly heated, hamburgers and even a couple of pasta dishes. You can eat very well for $7 or $8, less than half the average minimum of a regular trattoria.

Laden With Mugs

At night, the waiters in their tight-fitting black vests carry trays laden with beer mugs and platters of Bavarian-style dishes.

“We’ve remained a traditional birreria ,” said Rinelli, who looks rather like a massive Charlie Brown with a Cheshire Cat smile. “At lunch we have a lighter, more varied menu for the office workers who come in every day. But at night we carry on the classic birreria traditions.

“Naturally, people are drinking more beer now,” he said. “Today, it’s hard to find good wine that doesn’t cost a lot of money. But you can’t fake beer.”

Several other birrerie are near the Tempera. Across Piazza Santi Apostoli, for example, is another long-established beer hall, the Birreria Santi Apostoli. It’s more upscale than the Tempera, with a piano bar, but also serves Peroni beer.

Around the corner, heading toward the Trevi Fountain, is a modern birreria pizzeria that opened only a few years ago. With its plate-glass windows and contemporary design and decor, it’s a different world from the traditional Birreria Tempera.

Several well-known birrerie also are in the famous shopping area near the Spanish Steps and Via Veneto. Of these, Marco Peroni--the specialist--particularly recommends Birreria Albrecht on Via Crispi, which specializes in Austro-Hungarian cuisine.

“It caters to the theater-going crowd,” Peroni said. “And it serves terrific goulash.”