Athenians Getting Their ΦΙΞ Since 1864: The Return of a Beer

This is a story about national beer, Bavarian princes, a mysterious disappearance and an explosive comeback. Sounds like a good story, no?

To start, we have to do a little history lesson. After the end of the Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Empire, the country was in shambles. The heroes of the war were mostly mountain men, guerilla fighters with little interest in running a government. In walks the European Community announcing that Greece will be ruled by the young son of a Bavarian king. At seventeen years old, Prince Frederic Othon of Wittelswach was, shall we say, a little “wet behind the ears” to run a country alone, so he traveled east with a whole host of Bavarian advisers and civil servants. One of those was Johan Ludwig Fuchs, spelled in Greek, ΦΙΞ, or “FIX”, who was the brew master to the king.

King Othon, or Otto, was so unpopular the people tossed him on his royal rear twenty years after he arrived. When the new king showed up with his own brew master, Johan, newly unemployed, set about brewing in his Kolonaki home. He and his son turned it into an industry and all of the Bavarians and other expats in Greece lapped it up like it was ambrosia.

Fast forward 100 years and the people of Greece still loved their beer, even going so far as to dub the area surrounding the brewery along Syngrou Avenue simply “Fix.” One fateful day in the mid 1960’s, a bottle rose up from the cold north and decided to infiltrate the Mediterranean. Amstel beer took over as the people’s favorite, followed shortly by Heineken and Carlsburg. Fix finally closed the door of it’s brewery in 1982.

The recipe and title made a hand-to-hand dance from family members to bankers to other notable Greeks until finally ending in the hands of Olympic Brewery on the island of Euboea, not far outside of Athens. With a wild marketing campaign “FIX is back!” spearheaded by Spyros Tagos, an award winning recipe, and nostalgically designed label, Fix has returned to assume its throne as the Greek king of beers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWEjnIjodh8&feature=related[/youtube]

*Interesting note: The old brewery has been in the process of being retrofitted to house the National Museum of Contemporary Art since 2007. The building is considered one of the most important examples of Greek architecture in the 1950′s. Construction should be completed in two Greek minutes. (2011)
In the meantime you can read about how they are occupying themselves at www.fixit-emst.blogspot.com