Beer has been enjoyed with food for thousands of years. And then suddenly, somewhere in the middle of the 20^th century, most of us simply stopped doing it.

The explosion in ‘New World’ wine was partly to blame but the rot had set in long before that. Wine successfully traded on its reputation as a symbol of culture, inviting drinkers to join its elite club for the entry fee of a bottle of Bordeaux, cleverly creating demand by limiting supply, pushing ‘terroir’ and selling ‘status’.

The beer industry on the other hand took the other path. In a rush for profits it started cannibalising itself, with the large national breweries buying up the smaller regional set-ups.

Beer's reputation as a drink to enjoy with food got lost in all the macho marketing hype.

They in turn were devoured by international brewing conglomerates who pumped out beers so bland it was easy pickings for the wine aficionados. They gleefully turned their collective noses up at beer and delighted in telling us that wine was the natural partner to good food.

They had a point.

Sure there were some countries, some beer bastions, where beer continued to be enjoyed with food.  In Britain it has always been popular to have a pint of bitter with a traditional ploughman’s pub lunch. In Belgium the combination of mussels with the zany gueuze style of beer is still a national treasure, while bratwurst with malty märzen beers is a patriotic pleasure still enjoyed by a lot of Germans.

But the majority of us believed the word on the grapevine. Beer’s relationship with food was downgraded to TV dinners while wine was served in the world’s most exclusive restaurants.

But as in most good stories it is always darkest before the dawn. When the sun rose over California in the US in the mid 70s it heralded the start of a beer revolution by a few pioneering brewers who said enough was enough.

Tired with drinking tasteless beer and watching beer’s reputation drain away they started on the long journey of reclaiming beer as a drink of real character.

Since then a new generation of craft breweries around the world have risen up, producing adventurous, creative, delicious beers that when matched with food can turn good meals into great ones. At the same time we’ve started to rediscover the pleasures of matching ‘old world’ beers with food again.

Tomorrow – I give tips on how to pair food with beer,  matching strengths, finding harmonies and comparing and contrasting flavours.