Nordic ConnectionThe merger of Carlsberg’s and Orkla’s brewing interests

Love, marriage and baby carriage. International beverage concerns also like to tie the knot. Mergers are but the climax to secret affairs that began with furtive glances and timid touches. As in real life, what follows are scenes from a marriage.

Scandinavians have rather distinctive mating practices. If a Norwegian male has set eyes on a female Norwegian, he will ask her to go cross country skiing with him. What may seem a harmless skiing trip across snow swept plains is considered, in the Land of Herrings and North Sea Crude Oil, consensual foreplay to "making whoopee." At least this is what the female Norwegian thinks that he thinks. How the female and the male Dane get to know each other better is not really known, except that it probably involves butter biscuits...cdnow....

London restaurant Pacific Oriental successful with feature brewery

Oriental Restaurant Group plc (ORG) entered the boutique brewing market in 1998 opening Pacific Oriental at No. 1, Bishopsgate - a fine dining restaurant with feature brewery. Peter Frost, Head Brewer, discusses the process from conception to beer in glass.

No. 1 Bishopsgate has a Grade One listed early Edwardian façade with a mid 1980’s refurbished interior. The front is graced with thirty-foot tall Corin-thian columns interspersed to their full height by six feet wide plate glass windows. What better place to situate a state-of-the-art gleaming, copperclad brewery and dispense tanks in all its glory?

The answer, of course, is nowhere. Having seen various boutique breweries in the US, I thought the concept fresh and exciting and saw the market opening up in London......