Humpolec, 9 Oct. 2006 – The Bernard Family Brewery has achieved an excellent success.
In August, within the framework of the international competition known as “International Beer Challenge ‘World’s 50 Best Beers”, which is the largest competition of packaged beers held in the United Kingdom, this year attended by 350 various beers competing in ten categories, the Special Dark Beer Bernard with fine yeast culture was awarded the first prize in the most prestigious category “Strong Lager”.

“It was for the first time in the competition’s history when this prestigious category was won by a dark beer,” explains the co-proprietor of the Brewery, Mr. Stanislav Bernard. Approximately 40 experts assess in the two-round competition not only the taste of the beer, but also the design of its packaging.

At the end of September, Bernard managed to fight out the 2nd prize in the “Our Beer 2006” survey, in which 75 editorial offices were voting and selecting from the extremely strong competition of fifty-five Czech brands of beer, when only the market leader, Pilsner Urquell, got ahead of it.
“This is a very pleasant gift on the occasion of the upcoming 15th anniversary of foundation of the Bernard Family Brewery,” says the co-proprietor of the Brewery, Mr. Stanislav Bernard, and continues: “When Josef Vávra, Rudolf Šmejkal and I bought the bankrupt Humpolec Brewery in the auction in 1991, exactly on 26 October, we had only one worry – to revitalise it. At that time no one would have thought that the brand could achieve such successful results. This proves that the strategy of development and long-term directing of the brand towards premium beers which we selected for the brewery has been right.”

The Bernard Family Brewery currently brews seven kinds of non-pasteurised beer Bernard and non-alcohol beer “Bernard Free”.
It distributes its beer approximately to 1700 restaurants all over the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and it also exports beer to Sweden, Russia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Ukraine, Australia, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Poland, Japan and the U.S.A.

End of the Press Release.
For more information:
Zdeněk Mikulášek,
565 532 407
pivovar@bernard.cz
www.bernard.cz