FR Tours — Brasserie St. Eloi

Tours is wine country. The Loire Valley produces Vouvray and Chinon and a dozen other appellations that have made the region famous for centuries. Beer was always the counter-culture drink here — something for workers, soldiers, and Germans passing through. Louis Niederaurer was one of those Germans. In 1844, he established a small brewery in Tours on the grounds of the former Prieuré Saint-Eloi, a medieval priory on the Boulevard Béranger, and called it the Brasserie de Strasbourg. It was an act of quiet commercial ambition in a city that preferred its wine.

The brewery outlasted its founder, its name, and two world wars. By the time it passed to the Webel family it had become the Brasserie Webel Saint-Eloi — the most recognisable brewery in the Loire Valley, distinguished by a 40-metre tower visible from across the city and a red star on its bottle caps that made it unmistakable on any café table in the region. The red star preceded Heineken’s own red star by decades. Whether anyone in Amsterdam noticed the coincidence is not recorded.

Bière Webel was the flagship — a clean pale lager sold in amber bottles with porcelain stoppers, distributed across Touraine and marketed with enamel advertising signs that still surface occasionally in French antique markets. Pantherpils was the pilsner variant, lighter and more finely hopped, eventually so associated with the brewery that when it changed hands in 1960 the new owners renamed the whole operation Brasserie Saint Eloi-Pantherpils.

Heineken’s connection came in 1935, through board representation rather than a controlling stake. D.U. Stikker — a Heineken board member who would later serve as Dutch Foreign Minister and NATO Secretary-General — sat on the board of Brasserie Saint-Eloi S.A. from 1935 to 1939. The files covering that relationship are held in Heineken’s corporate archive at the Stadsarchief Amsterdam. What exactly was discussed at those board meetings — what Heineken wanted from a Loire Valley brewery, whether it was a commercial investment or a strategic foothold in the French market — is not documented in sources available to this archive.

What is known is that after 1939 the formal relationship ended. The war came. The brewery survived it. Post-war consolidation did not spare it — acquired by Brasserie de Basse-Yutz in 1960, then by Union de Brasserie in 1967, dissolved a year later, site closed in 1970, buildings sold to a bank in 1979 and demolished for housing. The 40-metre tower is gone. The red star on the bottle caps is gone.

Pantherpils is not entirely gone. A craft brewery in the nearby village of Cormery purchased the trademark and revived it in the 21st century — a light blonde lager, finely hopped, sold at festivals and cave à bières across the Tours region. They plan to revive Bière Webel and Saint-Eloi too. In a wine country that spent two centuries pretending not to like beer, a 180-year-old lager brand has found a second life.