These are good times to be a beer drinker in Scotland and for wine drinkers to find out what they're missing.
While the male stereotype of blokes with pints of fizzy lager remains entrenched, it is time to embrace the craft beer revolution which is there for everyone. That is part of my manifesto for the coming election - that good beer should cut across gender, age, class and social occasion just like good wine.
And talking of politics, it is worth remembering that long before it filled up with MSPs, Holyrood was a brewery from the 12th century monks of Holyrood Abbey
right up until 1985. If politicians learned to drink better maybe they would develop a more enlightened attitude to alcohol. They could start with Holyrood pale ale in the parliamentary bar.
It comes from Stewart's brewery just beyond the Edinburgh bypass near Ikea. While Sweden's temple to home improvement attracts thousands of pilgrims every weekend, a handful have discovered that life doesn't have to be flat-packed. Round the corner you can have a lot more fun in Stewart's beer kitchen.
For £200 you and up to three friends can spend three hours making pretty well any beer you like, with 53 recipes to choose from and an expert brewer on hand to help. You then design a label, email it over, and pop back three weeks later to pick up 80 litres of beer, half in a cask and the rest in bottles.
Stewart's was set up in 2002 by Steve Stewart who had worked for Bass and the Harpoon brewery in America in Boston, after graduating in brewing from Heriot Watt. His wife Jo who works alongside him, told me how Stewart's was born in a garage and eventually expanded to its current home - a shiny new brewery built two years ago. It was only then that there was space for the beer kitchen.
A few years ago Jo Stewart began to wonder if Scottish craft brewing was reaching saturation with more than 60 breweries. At the last count there were more than 100 from the mighty Brewdog to the smallest brewpub and consumer demand is still growing strongly. "It does feel more competitive out there," she says. "It keeps us on our toes and pushes us to be more innovative." The result is an ever-expanding range of diverse, quality beers.
And that's why these are good times.
Stewart's Holyrood Pale Ale 500ml £2.80, Great Grog, Cork & Cask etc (5%)
This award-winning brew with its refreshing grapefruit and citrus peel flavours slips down too easily
Cascadian east 500ml £2.80-£3.20, Great Grog, Oddbins, Hippo Beers (5.4%)
An amber-hued American pale ale from Stewart's with a fine zesty burst of citrus hops.
Fairtrade Malbec 2013, £8.99 (£7.49 24 Feb - 9 March) Co-Op (13%)
Produced by Argentina's giant La Riojana co-operative, it combines almost overripe jam with a fresh sour note on the tongue.
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