Brewed from nothing but the finest local ingredients in a 100-day brewing cycle (90 spent fermenting), Budweiser Budvar is universally considered one of the world's great lager-conditioned beers.

The settlement of Budweis was one of the new towns created by the King of Bohemia King, Otakar ll in 1265, the year in which the first Parliament was called in England. Those inhabitants of the new settlement who could pay their Council Tax, or its medieval equivalent, received brewing rights with the royal deal and that's how brewing began. There is of course nothing special about this. It was just that a regular supply of beer offered the average citizen a chance to get beyond 30 which the drinking water certainly didn't. Plus, then as now, the government knew a little earner when it saw one. What was different about the Budweis situation was that, for whatever reason, the inhabitants brewed a particularly good beer that early on stimulated its commercial production.