Marty recently bought three cases of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for his wedding, only to have his fiance discover that the beer had been bottled almost two years ago. Marty would never serve his wedding guests skunky beer. We would have returned the beer to the store, Total Wine & More in Alexandria, VA, but Marty decided to call Sierra Nevada. Their response, after the jump…

(Photo: wannaoreo)

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I wanted to fill you on a little somethin-somethin that went down this week. My fiancee and I just bought many cases of beer for our upcoming wedding from our local “Total Wine & More” in Alexandria, VA – three (3) of the cases we purchased were one of my favorite brews, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. We were unloading the beer and my wife-to-be noticed the “Bottling Date” printed on the outside of the cases: 06/25/05 “Wuhh? Our beer is two years old?!? Does it matter? Isn’t beer better if it’s aged??!?” Nuh-uh. The other two cases were bottled in mid-2006 — I called up Sierra Nevada and got right through to Consumer Support and Theresa flipped after I told her I found a two year old case of their beer hanging out on a store’s shelves. She said that she’s going to send an alert to the Vice President and their head of Sales & Marketing and that she’s also sending a representative over to that specific store location to figure out what is the dealio. She said that their beer should be no more than six (6) months old when purchased, and that’s if it’s stored at optimum (cool & dry) conditions.

Total Wine said they’d exchange the beer for different cases — (hopefully they’ll have Sierra Nevada from this year) and Sierra Nevada said that they would send a check to reimburse the full cost of the cases if Total Wine didn’t exchange the old beer!

So a rousing “cheers” to Theresa at Consumer Support at Sierra Nevada for saving the embarrassment of serving my wedding guests skunky beer. Keep up the great work, guys!

Great work, Sierra Nevada. — CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER

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