hat’s a noteworthy performance by the Czechs, who are recognized in various circles for their achievements in sports (the 1998 Olympic Ice Hockey Team), fine glass (Moser crystal) and even explosives (SEMTEX). Otherwise, the average guy on the street is likely to give you a puzzled look when asked about Czech culture. Even most of us who think of the Czech Republic as a bastion of beer would be unable to name more Czech brews than Pilsner Urquell and Budvar (Budweiser). Yet those two world-renowned labels are merely a teaser for what lurks delightfully beyond the hazy perceptions that most folks have of Bohemia and Moravia, the two halves of the Czech Republic.

Much of this ignorance stems from the region's four-decade-long obscurity from the West. When Soviet-backed communists took over Czechoslovakia's government in 1948, they did their best to make hamburger out of any impulses towards free enterprise — or free anything, for that matter — and they largely succeeded, with classic Marxist flair. The attempts at reform in the late 1960s known as the Prague Spring were trounced from Moscow, and were followed by another 20 years of grim neo-Stalinism. It wasn't until 1989’s "Velvet Revolution" that a brave minority, led by dissident playwright Vaclav Havel, took advantage of the crumbling Soviet system and steered the Czechoslovakian people out of their socialist nightmare. That said, "nightmare" is probably the wrong word, for throughout the long years of shortages, repression and harassment, at least one aspect of life in the Czech lands made it pleasurable — great beer.

Of course, this was nothing new. The Czechs had been brewing and drinking great beer since their arrival in central Europe sometime around the 9th century AD. From the late Middle Ages onward, they had been steadily elevating their reputation as brewers, most notably with the 19th century development, in the West Bohemian town of Plzen, of a style of bottom-fermenting beer that took the world by barrel. It gave us our most enduring vocabulary word of Czech origin: pilsner. With this rich tradition, the Czechs certainly weren't going to get distracted by the arrival of a bunch of hammer-and-sickle-waving Leninists in the mid-1900s.

That's not to say that central planning did not leave its mark on the brewing industry. Of the 280 breweries in Bohemia and Moravia in 1946, consolidations and closures directed from above left only 71 running in 1989.

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Marshall Dunlap is an American who must have been Czech in a past life. He has lived in Prague since 1991, where he owns and manages a company that provides export logistics, translation services and travel arrangements. He often visits the United States where his American company, Bohemian Crown Imports, markets and distributes luxury Czech stemware and their natural extension, Czech beer glasses.

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This story originally appeared in All About Beer Magazine in January 2000.