#1
This statesmanlike, red-labelled bottle is a narrative.
In the realm of ales, it’s Ulysses. A front bar round of pints is often comic theatre, and a butcher of ale (200ml for the uncertain) is a haiku revealing its buried fortune as you dig into its poetic earth. But the Coopers Sparkling Ale prose is of canonical eminence. Like engaging with longform art, there’s opportunity for immersive delight but also an obligation to contemplate life’s deeper themes. It’s your favourite novel, your Great Gatsby which you re-read on the lounge as an affirming annual indulgence after Boxing Day.
#2
No, this beer isn’t The Beatles. With a heart prone to menace and darkness it’s The Rolling Stones and their farewell letter to the sixties, Let It Bleed. Every glass contains Mick and Keef’s nightfall poetry and gritty realities, deathless swagger and irresolvable tension. We traverse from the ‘apocalyptic dread’ of that first foamy tumbler in ‘Gimme Shelter’ to the psychological ruin sweeping across, ’You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ Now, the music fades and you drain the dregs into your cherished schooner as the glimmering sun slants in over the back lawn.
#3
My Friday evening ritual is a Sistine Chapel visit. Like many of life’s joys, one is sufficient but two is dastardly excess from which no good can result. Take in the grandeur, and purity of aspiration. Open-mouthed and fizzing of brain, I stare up at Michelangelo’s ceiling. But do it only once. And if you’re tempted, don’t return to the fridge for a second bottle. You’re done. What else can you request from a work of art?
#4
Each frosty longneck comes complete with engaging conversation, original observations, and deep introspection. Listen to its voice and you’re reminded of Richard Burton, all conquest and divine warmth, commencing his narration in Under Milkwood
To begin at the beginning:
It is spring, moonless night in the small town
Starless and bible-black
The cobblestreets silent and the hunched
courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible
down to the sloeblack slow, black, crowblack,
fishingboatbobbing sea.
#5
Old bull: No, let’s walk down and do the lot.
#6
It’s also a maverick. The only beer commonly viewed as being better out of a bottle and not taken from the keg. Why is it so? The scientists could tell us but at play there’s delightful alchemy. Flip the bottle top and shake hands with this twelfth apostle, this preternaturally talented twelfth man cricketer, this Lysithea (the twelfth moon of Jupiter). Another time when the reluctant rebel instructs those of us safely inside the fence line.
#7
Erect of glassed carriage it dominates its alfresco setting. A statement beverage, announcing itself as quietly authoritative. Warning against a flimsy heart but offering steely security of purpose. Depending on the light, it’s a romantic painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, or a Shakespearean sonnet, but ultimately, it’s dynamic and organic like Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural wonder, Falling Water.
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