Polar
Polar
The story of Cervecería Polar begins on 14 March 1941, when Caracas lawyer Lorenzo Alejandro Mendoza Fleury, together with Rafael Luján and the German Karl Eggers, founded Cervecería Polar in the small plant in Antímano, west of Caracas – a project full of risks that had already begun to take shape in 1939, when the first brewing kettle from Europe crossed the Atlantic by ship and arrived in Venezuela on Christmas Day 1939. The name Polar and the unmistakable polar bear on the label became a symbol of coolness, refreshment and Venezuelan national pride – and Polar Pilsener became within just a few years the most consumed and best-known beer in the country, today led in the third generation by Lorenzo Mendoza, the grandson of the founder, as part of Venezuela's second largest company after Petróleos de Venezuela.
Empresas Polar is the second largest business enterprise in Venezuela after Petróleos de Venezuela and has expanded far beyond beer production into a diversified food group that encompasses alongside the brewery also Polar Foods and Pepsi Venezuela. The brewery has had to navigate significant political challenges over the decades – the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro repeatedly came into conflict with Empresas Polar, and in April 2016 beer production had to be temporarily halted due to the absence of import permits for barley. Despite these adversities, Polar remained the undisputed national beer of Venezuela and is also extremely popular on the neighbouring Caribbean ABC islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao.
Polar Pilsener is today produced under licence in Spain and other markets and presents itself in a radiant golden yellow with a clean, refreshing aroma, a very light, delicately bitter and mildly fruity flavour profile with slightly berry-like notes and a subtly lingering bitterness that makes it the ideal companion for hot days, Caribbean dishes and social occasions. As a beer that has embodied Venezuelan identity, warmth and joie de vivre in every bottle for over 80 years, Polar is far more than a beverage – it is liquid national pride, an inseparable part of Venezuelan culture and a piece of Caribbean spirit of life that makes itself felt in every single sip.