Quilmes

Argentina in a bottle: that's Quilmes — the national lager, dressed in the same sky-blue and white as the football team it has sponsored for decades, and standard issue at every asado, the Argentine barbecue liturgy, from Patagonia to the Paraná.

The name belongs to a town. In 1888, the German-born immigrant Otto Bemberg set up his brewery in the town of Quilmes, just south of Buenos Aires, and the naming has since run in reverse: the town gave the beer its identity, then the beer made the town famous. Say "Quilmes" almost anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world and people picture the striped label, not the suburb.

Cervecería y Maltería Quilmes now sits inside AB InBev, the world's largest brewer at 484.19 million hectolitres in 2025, but the rituals stay stubbornly Argentine: litre bottles of cold lager shared around the grill, and streets awash in sky-blue whenever the national team wins anything worth singing about.

Brilliant pale gold with tight white foam, a light grainy-sweet palate carrying a whisper of corn, and snappy carbonation that scrubs the tongue clean. Bitterness is low and the finish is quick — deliberately so, because its natural habitat is beside an asado, cutting through chorizo and grilled fat while the litre bottle sweats on the table.