DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE IN PRINT

I was tidying up the cupboards today and found this 'blast from the past'

It's a Lion Breweries monthly magazine that was produced in the early 1980s. This one is December 1981.

On page 26 there is this photograph.

I had just arrived in Auckland then and took a job as assistant manager at Howick Village Cellars. The two women in the photograph were Lion Breweries employees who were dong an in-store tasting of the re-released Rheineck beer. They were a couple of pissheads if I remember rightly. The Lion photographer appeared, snapped the photo and didn't ask for my name which I'm happy about as the beer was crap. I had a glass in my hand just to be polite. They describe me as a young beer connoisseur (they got the 'con' right) which should please Robert.

When I drank beer back in those days it was more likely to be the excellent Leopard Deluxe lager or Red Band Export lager if it was a New Zealand beer (Carlsberg, Heineken or Tuborg if an imported one). I didn't drink muck like Rheineck, Brew 22, Bass, Lion Red, DB Bitter or all of the other soapy crap that both breweries produced (except of course the two lagers I mentioned above).