Small Transylvania Brewer Stood Up to a Beer Giant, and Survived<br />Still, Mr. Lenard insisted that even if the dispute had brought useful publicity,<br />he said it had taken attention away from the fact that he makes “quality beer.”<br />beer,” Razvan Costache, who runs a blog about rare craft beer, said in an interview in Bucharest.<br />“And this struggle with Heineken, whether or not intentionally, here in the Szekler land, has become the symbol of the local struggle to survive.”<br />Csiki has certainly helped to bolster the Szekler brand,<br />but to its detractors, it has put too much of an accent on patriotic marketing and has grown too big to be truly artisanal.<br />“We recognized the emotional value of the Csiki brand name to its brewers<br />and consumers, as well as to its stakeholders in both Romania and Hungary,” John-Paul Schuirink, director for global communication at Heineken, said in an email.<br />Mr. Lenard called his beer Csiki Sor (pronounced “cheeky shore”), after the Hungarian name for the region, Csik.
