Wellington Bar Reaches Significant Milestone

October 9, 2014. For immediate release.

Wellington Bar Reaches Significant Milestone.

Wellington bar Hashigo Zake announces that it will officially celebrate five years of trading during the week of October 20-26 this year.

The small, underground bar first opened its doors at the time of the 2009 Beervana beer festival taking place at the nearby Wellington Town Hall. At the time few people were confident that a bar in Wellington’s CBD with no ties to the big industrial breweries would survive. Instead it flourished and, in the words of the 2012 edition of the Lonely Planet, became the “headquarters of Wellington’s underground beer movement”. New Zealand’s Society of Beer Advocates named Hashigo Zake Wellington’s Best Bar in 2013. And influential website ratebeer.com gave Hashigo Zake the title of New Zealand’s Best Beer Retailer for 2013.

Stu McKinlay, of pioneering local brewery Yeastie Boys, commented “Hashigo Zake is the catalyst that kicked off the Wellington beer revolution. You guys proved that bars could be bold and uncompromising... and without the bars, the breweries would never have come."

As well as being the first outlet for many small and independent local breweries, Hashigo Zake distinguished itself by importing and selling the beers of several leading breweries in Japan, the US and Europe. That initiative has led to the creation of an importing and distribution subsidiary – Beer Without Borders - which now operates autonomously up the road from Hashigo Zake.

Celebrations begin on Monday October 20, with the simultaneous launch of a range of new beers supplied by some of Hashigo Zake’s favourite breweries.

The week’s celebrations will climax on Saturday the 25th and Sunday the 26th with the 4th Pacific Beer Expo, New Zealand’s most unashamedly elite beer festival, which is held on Wellington’s Waterfront. The Pacific Beer Expo was inaugurated in 2011 as a showcase of much of the best beer from New Zealand and the Pacific Rim and is now a co-production with Goldings Free Dive and Beer Without Borders.

ENDS

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