Looking back, it seems astonish-ing that the metropolitan middle classes took so long to embrace beer snobbery. The craft beer habit combines the characteristics of three long-established sources of small-scale social distinction: the farmer’s market, the tasting, and the sweet little café one knows.
Take the farmer’s-market side first. Even in the age of climate change, and after all those competitions in which some unlabelled bottle from Sussex defeats the best of Champagne, very few places in Britain can claim a local wine.
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