像爱尔兰人一样喝酒

所属教程:金融时报原文阅读

浏览:

2020年08月07日

手机版

扫描二维码方便学习和分享

像爱尔兰人一样喝酒

爱尔兰人爱喝酒是举世闻名的，都柏林更是世界著名的吉尼斯黑啤（Guinness）原产地。全国的大小酒吧不计其数，据说面积不过45平方公里的都柏林就有2000多家酒吧。对当地人来说喝酒更像是在享受，甚至喝酒的氛围感觉和如何倒酒也是一门技术活。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

stout 烈性啤酒[staʊt]

lager 贮藏啤酒['lɑːgə]

soak up 吸收[səʊk]

Guinness 吉尼斯黑啤酒（英国产强性黑啤酒的一种）['ɡinis]

go to great lengths 不遗余力

adamant 坚强的；坚定不移的；坚硬无比的['ædəm(ə)nt]

austerity 紧缩；朴素；苦行[ɒˈsterəti]

legacy 遗赠，遗产['legəsɪ]

traumatic 创伤的[trɔː'mætɪk; traʊ-]

Celtic Tiger 凯尔特之虎；爱尔兰之虎凯尔特之虎|爱尔兰过去是西欧最贫穷国家之一，其经济高速增长开始于1995年，从那时起这个国家被称为“凯尔特之虎”。在接下来的12年，爱尔兰经济以史无前例地速度增长，每年增长率为6％－11％不等。

阅读马上开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用的时间，对照下方的参考值就可以评估出您的英文阅读水平。

如果您读完全文用时为：那么，您的阅读速度相当于每分钟阅读的英文单词数

5分52秒母语为英语者的朗读速度 140

2分58秒母语为英语的中学生的阅读速度 250

2分32秒母语为英语的大学生的阅读速度 350

0分14秒母语为英语的速读高手 1000

The Irish reclaim the art of pulling the perfect pint（745words）

By Vincent Boland

-----------------------------------------------------

Devitts pub in central Dublin is an increasingly rare thing. It has been owned by the same family for years, it offers traditional Irish music “sessions” every week and it serves a decent pint.

You might think that last attribute is a given: don’t all Irish pubs serve a decent pint? Alas, no. In a country where nearly everything — politics, sport, roads, business, education, food and people’s expectations — has changed mostly for the better over a generation, this is one institution that is still stuck in the 20th century.

Ireland’s pubs, collectively, are deep in debt as a result of the financial crisis; many have closed in recent years. Though Dublin has its share of loud, shiny new bars, its “locals” can be dismal places, with tatty interiors and bad food. But their dirty little secret, it turns out, is that bar staff have either lost or never acquired the most basic skill of all: pint-pulling.

“We’ve lost the art and craft that used to be associated with our trade,” says Deirdre Devitt, owner of the Camden Street pub. “The young fellows behind the bar — they have zero training.” Ger Galvin is on a mission to change that, which is why he was in Devitts one recent evening, along with representatives of the drinks and pub trades. Galvin is the founder of the Hibernian Brewing School and has designed a course — starting next month, with the backing of the City & Guilds vocational education organisation — to train Ireland’s bar staff to pull “the perfect pint”. “Is there a skills problem in Irish pubs? I think there is,” he says. “When the world was simpler, bar staff were trained to the level they needed to be at. But now people want to know what they are drinking, what the difference is between one beer and another. Seventy per cent of people who come into an Irish pub today don’t know what they want to drink. They are after an experience — and staff need to be able to respond to that.”

The art of pulling a pint applies particularly to Guinness, the most traditional offering in an Irish pub. It is not a beer, it is a stout — heavier and creamier than lager or beer, and its pulling requires patience. But the skills gap applies to the business of pint-pulling in general, and to the wider question of hospitality in pubs.

The Irish like to think they are a hospitable people — partly because it is true and partly because it is what tourism advertising has been telling them for years. Tourism is an essential industry, and one of the traveller’s top desires is to sit in a bar, drink a pint and soak up some of the atmosphere of the country.

According to research by Tony Foley, an economist at Dublin City University, the number-one experience sought by visitors is “listening to Irish music in a pub”. The country’s most visited attraction is the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin: the “home of Guinness”. It attracted 1.5m visitors last year.

Both the drinks industry and tourism chiefs say it is time for pubs to ensure the experience that visitors have in museums such as this is matched in Ireland’s actual pubs. Drinks industry bosses say they go to great lengths to produce excellent beers; they are increasingly adamant that such excellence must not break down at the point of sale.

There are two other factors forcing pubs to change. One is the growth of craft brewing in Ireland. Jonathan McDade, head of the Irish Brewers Association, says there are likely to be 70 breweries producing craft beers by the end of this year, compared with just a handful 20 years ago. But, he says, there is “no unified, minimum industry standard, and we want to create one”.

The second is that Irish people, in general, have much higher expectations of the quality of what they consume than they did even during the Celtic Tiger years of economic expansion between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. As they start to spend again, after years of austerity, they are no longer willing to tolerate second best. It is one of the happier legacies of the traumatic financial crisis.

With a tentative economic recovery under way, some pubs are starting to flourish again. “Camden Street is flying — it’s a sign that things are better,” Devitt says. “But pubs need to change. It’s no longer about slapping a pint on the bar.”

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1. What kind of pint does Devitts pub serve?

A. decent

B. bad

C. sour

D. perfect

2. What do people want to know when they are drinking now?

A. how much they can drink

B. the difference is between one beer and another

C. the taste of the drink

D. the mood when they are drinking

3. Which one is not right about the stout?