Chris Blattman

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How do you say “I’ll have a $44 Pabst Blue Ribbon” in Chinese?

Dave Algoso points us to the most expensive bottle of brew you never imagined:

That reliably blue-collar Milwaukee lager, later adopted by unbearable hipsters on the coasts, has turned up in China. And P.B.R., best known in the U.S. for being the cheapest beer on the grocery-store shelf, has—like so many expatriates before it—taken the move as an opportunity to change its image. For a beer, that appears to involve an elegant glass bottle and a fantastically ridiculous price tag. One bottle: forty-four dollars.

Who would have thought the hipster’s beloved PBR is being advertised in Chinese magazines as a “world famous spirit” to be savored from a champagne flute?

I can just imagine Chinese twentysomethings wearing skinny jeans and a stupid little fedora, sipping their $44 brew from a wine glass.

Full story in the New Yorker.

3 Responses

  1. “It’s not the same beer as in North America:”

    yeah, a magic wand has been waved across the vat which has transformed it from $2.50 / 6-pack to $264 / 6-pack. Definitely *not* the same beer!

  2. It’s not the same beer as in North America:

    “UPDATE: Turns out, it’s not the same brew! Despite being from the same company and having the same name, the beer is actually different from America’s Pabst Blue Ribbon. Pabst Blue Ribbon 1844 is a special brew that’s only sold in China.” (From Time magazine)

  3. I can think of more than a few examples of this. In Romania, the Best Western and Howard Johnson are actually pretty nice hotels with expensive brunches. You could same the same about McDonald’s, I suppose, except the quality isn’t any better (though the service is).

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