Small Transylvania Brewer Stood Up to a Beer Giant, and Survived
Still, Mr. Lenard insisted that even if the dispute had brought useful publicity,
he said it had taken attention away from the fact that he makes “quality beer.”
beer,” Razvan Costache, who runs a blog about rare craft beer, said in an interview in Bucharest.
“And this struggle with Heineken, whether or not intentionally, here in the Szekler land, has become the symbol of the local struggle to survive.”
Csiki has certainly helped to bolster the Szekler brand,
but to its detractors, it has put too much of an accent on patriotic marketing and has grown too big to be truly artisanal.
“We recognized the emotional value of the Csiki brand name to its brewers
and consumers, as well as to its stakeholders in both Romania and Hungary,” John-Paul Schuirink, director for global communication at Heineken, said in an email.
Mr. Lenard called his beer Csiki Sor (pronounced “cheeky shore”), after the Hungarian name for the region, Csik.
