The former conviction was underlined this week when Budejovicky Budvar announced that it had won the latest round in the global legal battle and had been awarded the right to sell its beer under its original brand names in Cambodia as a result of ruling by that nation's Supreme Court. A lower Cambodian court ruled in favor of Anheuser-Busch in 2000, ordering the cancelation of registered Budvar trademarks in the country, but an appeals court judgement favor of Budvar two years later was upheld by the Supreme Court.

The issue of maintaining quality arose when the writers, who were traveling with Colorado's Distinguished Brands International and several American distributors, questioned Budvar brewmaster Josef Tolar during a brewery tour on April 7 and asked him about draft Budvar in the United States. Using the brand name Czechvar to circumvent the Anheuser-Busch imbroglio, Budvar has been exporting its lager here since 2001, but only in bottles. Last year, when the brewery changed from its original importer to DBI, company president Jeff Coleman announced that a four-city select market trial of draft Czechvar would begin this past January, but that did not happen.

Tolar, a 40-year veteran who is only the ninth brewer in Budvar's 100-year history, said that "progress is being made" toward that end. "I hope in a short time we will be able to do it," he added, stressing that his beer is exactly the same all over the world. "All Budvar is made in this one brewery and the exported beer is the same beer as is served here in the Czech Republic. It is made with the same high quality ingredients and water from our own artesian wells. Our beer is very important to us."

Tolar has insisted that interested bars and restaurants in this country be required to pre-order Czechvar each month so that it can be shipped direct and fresh from the brewery two months later, Coleman said, and that they also commit to completing a Czechvar keg every three days, thus ensuring the freshness of all beer poured. He acknowledged that such stringent requirements could be off-putting to the majority of potential accounts, but suggested that "for those accounts who truly want to serve their customers the world's finest beer, it will be more than worth their effort."