The next time you open a bottle or can of the popular Mexican beer called Dos Equis, according to Beer Business Daily, it might have been produced not in Mexico at all, but roughly 5,400 miles away in the western Netherlands.
When the Mexican government declared a state of emergency in the face of the coronavirus on Mar. 31, one provision was the effective closing of what it considered non-essential businesses. To the dismay of cerveza-lovers on both sides of the border, this included breweries.
We drink a lot of Mexican beer in this country. Five examples made the list of the 31 biggest beer brands in America.
The most popular of these is the perhaps unfortunately branded Corona Extra, which is America’s sixth-largest-selling beer. (A survey whose results were reported in late February suggested that at least some Americans were avoiding Corona as news of the virus spread solely on the basis of its name.)
Constellation, which owns Corona, was able to continue producing some suds with a skeleton crew in Mexico exclusively for the U.S. market. On the other hand, Grupo Modelo, which produces Dos Equis, America’s 20th-most-popular beer, shut down its operations entirely until restrictions were lifted — perhaps imperiling the brew’s impressive performance in recent years as one of America’s fastest growing beer brands.
Luckily for lovers of the beer, Grupo Modelo is owned by Holland’s Heineken company, and the firm made the decision to transfer production of Dos Equis to its main brewery in the Dutch municipality of Zoeterwoude for the moment, shipping it across the Atlantic to make up for any shortages in the U.S. supply chain.
This is presumably only a temporary measure. Mexican breweries were allowed to reopen on June 1, with safety measures in place, and Dos Equis from Monterrey should soon be in plentiful supply here again.