Flashing Back on a Decade of Holiday Beer Labels

For me, one of the delights of working at Rick Steves’ Europe is the way my staff mixes fun, creativity, talent, and hard work. Each year we brew a holiday beer as a staff event, and our art department comes up with our own beer bottle label. Here’s a review of a decade of Rick Steves’ Europe-produced beers. I wish you could taste them, but at least you can enjoy the creative talent of our art department.

“Mona Drinks” is a reference to our beloved Mona Winks guidebook, which was filled with self-guided tours of Europe’s top museums (now out of print, but resurrected as the audio tours in our free Rick Steves’ Audio Europe™ App):

 

“Mona’s Back,” from 2002, was a statement in the year after 9/11 that we were traveling on:

 

 

The “Immaculate Consumption” was built on sketchy archaeological evidence that there may have been beer at the manger on that first Christmas:

 

 

“Ale 70 Shows” refers to our anthology of TV shows that has grown every two years — from 36, to 43, to 56, to 70, and so on. We’re at “over 100” now, but at the time, “All 70 Shows” seemed like quite a pinnacle”:

The “Eyjafjallajökull Steam Ale” from 2010 commemorated the Icelandic volcano commonly known as E-15 (for the number of letters that followed the first letter in its unpronounceable-to-most name):

 

And 2013 saw the first appearance of Santa Steves:

Anyway…here’s to a wonderful Christmas and happy holidays to all.