Santa's Butt Hauled Into Court

Shelton Brothers, located in Belchertown (you can't make this stuff up) Massachusetts, imports good beer...by hand.

They say, "The best beers are brewed with a sense of place, a distinctive house character, and an appreciation for tradition, value, and/or the natural art of beer-making." Some of those beers are imported from Ridgeway Brewing Company, in England, and there's a bit of history there to be told.

It’s a sad tale, the closing of the venerable Brakspear brewery in Henley-on-Thames, where the most famous and surely the best Bitter in England has been made for centuries. The brewery, in operation since 1779, was sold off in 2002 in parts to make room for an upscale hotel, and everyone who worked there was let go, without so much as a by-your-leave. But for beer lovers, the closing was not a complete disaster. Thankfully, the master brewer at Brakspear, Peter Scholey, determined to strike out on his own. Peter has set up shop as Ridgeway Brewing, not so far from Henley, and already he’s putting out beers so good they could almost make you forget Brakspear altogether.

The Ridgeway Brewery is named for the ancient road – passable now only on foot – that meanders along a low escarpment across the high, rolling pastoral plain that is the southwest of England. The now patchy stone surface of the Ridgeway was laid by Britain’s oldest inhabitants – Druids and the like – thousands of years before the Romans turned up to build their own roadways. It is the oldest road in the British Isles and Europe, running nearly 100 miles, past that other ancient landmark, Stonehenge, as well as Peter Scholey’s relatively modern home, along the way.

The story doesn't end there, but takes an unexpected turn in New England.

According to a report in local papers, the Maine Civil Liberties Union Foundation filed a lawsuit this week claiming government censorship after the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement refused to allow Massachusetts-based Shelton Brothers to sell Santa's Butt and two other beers with label illustrations that the agency deemed "undignified or improper."

State law requires beer distributors to register labels with the liquor enforcement bureau. Maine State Police Lt. Patrick Fleming said the agency reviews 10,000 to 12,000 applications a year and typically denies about a dozen. Applicants who are denied are given a chance to alter the label and reapply, he said.

The Santa's Butt label depicts Santa Claus from behind, sitting on a barrel. It is intended to have a double meaning, Shelton said, in that "butt" is also a term used to identify the 126-gallon barrel on the label.

The two other rejected labels feature artwork depicting topless women. One, for a beer imported from France, uses the Eugene Delacroix painting "Liberty leading the people," which hangs in the Louvre.

This isn't the Shelton Brothers' first run-in with the law. Last year, there was a brewhaha in Connecticut over seasonal beer labels for Ridgeway's Seriously Bad Elf and Warm Welcome. And now, they're back in court with the State of New York over this.