In recent months, our lives have begun to resemble Hollywood movies about a zombie invasion. Not exactly, of course, but many scenes are very similar – hotels, airports, schools are closing, people are buying up canned goods, they are afraid to shake hands. The Universal craziness – the epidemic of the Corona virus has turned our lives upside down. I would be interested to know if young people have also stopped being in love, or do they request a health certificate before their first kiss?

Between the news about the number of people infected with a virus and the failed attempts to finally form a government, the news that the magical Stella Artois beer is leaving us went unnoticed. This was reported by Calcalist, Israel’s largest economic website, and later confirmed by the management of IBBL, the company that brews this wonderful beer.

The owner of this brand, the largest brewing concern in the world AB InBev (Anheuser-Busch InBev), tried to pressure the Israeli concern CBC (The Central Bottling Company – Coca Cola Israel) to sell another of their brands in our country – Budweiser lager beer. As of today, the market share of this beer in marketing networks is only one percent and the management of the Israeli concern decided to reject the new brand in its portfolio. For this reason, the contract with AB InBev was not extended and from January 2021 CBC Group will stop producing and selling Stella Artois and importing Hoegaarden, Leffe Blond and Leffe Brown.

The delicate Belgian lager Stella Artois was very popular in Israel. We brewers were very liked this beer and we called it Stelochka between us, and sometimes in pubs we used to give the waitresses a real stupor when we habitually asked for a glass of Stelochka…

Such is the sad beer news from Israel…