Don’t mess with The Vermonster!

So I’ve been devoting a lot of Tweets, Facebook posts, and a couple of blog posts about the whole Rock Art Brewery legal fiasco.  You can read my blog posts here and here for all the details.

Basically, Rock Art received a *cease & desist* letter from the makers of Monster Energy Drinks, demanding that they stop using the name of *Vermonster* for one of their beers.  Their argument was that people might confuse the two drinks.  This, of course, was absolutely ridiculous, as the labels look NOTHING alike!  One would have to have consumed many, many Vermonsters to be drunk enough to not notice the difference!

Now, if you know me, you know how much I love craft beers, as well as being supportive of the little guy over huge corporations.  So it brings me great joy to tell you that Rock Art has won the battle!

Basically, Rock Art gets to keep calling their high-octane barleywine “The Vermonster” if they promise to stay out of the energy drink business.  That will be easy, as Rock Art’s owners, Matt & Renee Nadeau, never had any intention of doing so in the first place.  All they want to do is brew beer!

Also the Monster people have agreed to pay any legal fees incurred by Rock Art in this whole mess.  That has to be a HUGE relief for Matt & Renee, as they do not have the deep pockets of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

What is really amazing about this whole thing is how quickly people came together to show their support.  I first learned of Rock Art’s plight on Facebook, on the fan page for Smuttynose Brewery, of Portsmouth, NH.

Although I had never even heard of Rock Art Brewery before, I was outraged enough to take action.  I blogged, Facebooked and Tweeted it.  I signed an online petition.  I contacted Hansen, the parent company of the Monster drinks, to let them know of my displeasure.  I contacted a few Massachusetts liquor stores that specialize in hard-to-find beers, such as Yankee Spirits, and asked them to order Vermonster and other Rock Art beers so that I could buy them.  And I called the brewery to order their *Save The Vermonster* T-shirts for me and Mike.  Buying and wearing the shirts would not only help spread the word, but the proceeds from the sales would have gone to help defray their legal fees.

And I wasn’t the only one to show support.  Craft beer lovers from all over signed the petition, joined the Rock Art Facebook fan page, etc.  Even people who’ve never even been to Vermont joined in, from people who run microbreweries in California to employees of Blue Cross NC.  It was simply amazing!

Hansen/Monster has definitely underestimated the power of the craft beer community.  It’s not a cut-throat, super-competitive industry…craft brewers like to support one another.  So when one of their own is in trouble, they’ll rally together in support.

And that, as Martha Stewart would say, is a good thing!