Samson Brewery

Brewery Samson is the oldest brewery in Budějovice, a short way south of the centre, and has been brewing since 1795 — a hundred years earlier than Budvar. And yet for over a hundred years it was not allowed to use its own historic name.

It brews around eighty-three thousand hectolitres of beer a year, roughly sixteen and a half million half-litres, and more than half leaves for abroad — to Austria, Poland, Denmark and Brazil. It is brewed with water from an artesian well 274 metres deep, and at home Samson is poured in about thirty-five pubs in the town and around.

At the international World Beer Awards 2022 Samson Bock won as the world’s best bock lager. And brewmaster Radim Lavička knows where the beer is best: the unfiltered, he says, is “racked into casks in the morning and tapped in the afternoon”. The brewery has a shop, and tours run year-round by appointment.

In 1795 two breweries stood in the inner town — the Small and the Large, called the White. (The White Tower, later built into the theatre, took its name from the latter.) They did not belong to a company. They belonged to burghers who held brewing rights — those who owned a house in the inner town and paid taxes. That was the same arrangement that applied in Budějovice to meat: the craft was a matter of property, not only skill.

Those burghers that year agreed to merge both breweries into one enterprise. Thus arose the Budějovice Burghers’ Brewery — in German Budweiser Bürgerbräu. From 1802 its beer was sold as Budweiser Bier, “Budějovice beer”. In 1899 that designation was officially registered as a trademark.

What happened next

In 1895 a second large brewery arose in town — the Czech Joint-Stock Brewery, today’s Budvar. It was founded as a Czech answer to German economic dominance in the town. From then on two breweries stood opposite each other in Budějovice: the older German and the younger Czech. And both sold beer named after the same town.

A name from a statue

In 1958 the brewery received a new name. German Bürgerbräu could not stand in post-war Czechoslovakia. Something else was needed — and they chose the most Budějovice thing in town: Samson, the strongman who on the fountain in the middle of the square overcomes the lion.

And now the essential point

Here is a fact you will not hear at Budvar, and which puts the famous dispute over the word Budweiser in another light. The Budějovice Burghers’ Brewery is a hundred years older than Budvar. And yet it was not allowed to use its historic name — because the trademarks Budweiser Bürgerbräu were meanwhile held by Budvar. It took a long time. Designations such as Budějovický měšťanský var and Budweiser Bürgerbräu Samson may use only from 1991; others such as Budějovické pivo or Budweiser Bier from 1993 — and full use of the Budweiser Bürgerbräu mark was settled only in 2005.

So while Budvar fought some two hundred court cases worldwide for the principle that a place-name belongs to a product from that place, at home it held the name of the brewery that had been there a hundred years earlier. (This is not an accusation and takes nothing from Budvar — its argument in the American dispute holds and is described at Budvar. It is simply a fact that belongs to the story.)

On site

Timeline

Questions

Sources