Region & History

Order a beer in Glasgow, and in most pubs you'll be handed a lager rather than an ale. That's unusual for a British city, and the reason lies in the East End, around the Wellpark brewery. That's where Tennent's brews, and the company traces its history back to 1556, when a Robert Tennent is recorded among the city's Maltmen.

Founded as H. & R. Tennent, the company says it was established in 1740 at Drygate Bridge. In the 1790s, the Tennents bought the neighbouring brewery from William McLehose and named the five-acre site Wellpark. By the mid-19th century, J. & R. Tennent was considered the largest exporter of bottled beer in the world.

The decisive step came in 1885. Hugh Tennent had taken over his brother's share a year earlier, encountered pale, bottom-fermented Pilsner-style beer in Bavaria, and introduced it back home. Tennent's Lager has since been regarded as Britain's first lager.

A quite different story begins in 2006. Bavarian-born Petra Wetzel founded WEST in part of the disused Templeton carpet factory on Glasgow Green, a building styled after the Doge's Palace in Venice. Every beer brewed there follows the Reinheitsgebot, the purity law enacted in Ingolstadt for Bavaria in 1516.

Today, Tennent Caledonian, the company behind Wellpark, belongs to C&C Group plc, which also makes the cider Magners. WEST remains an independent brewery. There's no protected designation of origin for Glasgow beer; the only British entries in the EU register are Kentish Ale and Rutland Bitter.