Microbrews in microcosm
By Chris King
Photograph by Dilip Vishwanat
If you are a wealthy lawyer, a civic leader, an employer and a Schlafly, you can do pretty much whatever you want to do in St. Louis, in particular at Schlafly Brewing. You can write a cranky and meandering column for your company newsletter. You can even write a cranky and meandering book—A New Religion in Mecca: Memoir of a Renegade Brewer in St. Louis—whose title pokes fun at one of our last remaining corporate giants, using Islam’s holy city as a metaphor. It’s good to be Tom Schlafly.
Tom Schlafly, too, is good. He is a good lawyer (at Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin), a good employer (the folks at Schlafly say good things about him, especially behind his back), a do-gooder (a leader at the St. Louis Public Library, among other local institutions), a good guy and, most important at the moment, a good writer. His columns and his book are intelligent, funny and sly—qualities that sneak into his conversational style.
Is A-B good for St. Louis?
Anheuser-Busch is good for St. Louis, even [if you're] in the beer business. When we started out, we got more free publicity than any other kind of new business. To the media, it was a David-and-Goliath story, and I was never the bad guy.
Do you go after A-B in this book?
“Go after them” is the wrong way to put it. I discuss them at great length. I talk about the attention St. Louis gives to beer. It’s hard to talk about brewing in St. Louis without talking about Anheuser-Busch. It’s just called “the brewery,” though McDonnell-Douglas wasn’t called “the aircraft factory” and the May Company’s Famous-Barr wasn’t called “the department store.” Starting a brewery in St. Louis is heresy—that was very much the attitude when we started. Then the final chapter talks about the beer we did with A-B for the 300th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard’s Ale.
What beer do you have at home right now?
I have two beers on tap at home, our Oktoberfest and our Kölsch. I usually try to keep one lighter and one darker beer on tap. Plus, my wife (Ulrike Schlafly) is from Cologne, Germany, and Kölsch is a style characteristic of Cologne.
Does she drink beer?
She had one beer when we met. It was in the back of her fridge and had a “born on” date stamped on it that was about three years old. She offered it to me, and I said, “Maybe I’ll have some wine.”
Who were the last politicians who came to you with their hands out?
Kurt Odenwald and Barbara Fraser [candidates in the November election for the same seat on the St. Louis County Council; Fraser prevailed]. I gave to both. Officially I’m a Democrat—I’m the treasurer of [St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney] Jennifer Joyce’s campaign—but I try not to do anything too divisive. I don’t want to alienate half my customers.
Half your customers are Republican?
I don’t know. Beer drinkers tend to be largely male, and males tend to be Republican. Candidates for both parties have held events with us. [Former U.S. House Speaker] Dennis Hastert used to be a wrestling coach, and he was in town for the NCAA wrestling finals. He came into the Tap Room and wanted to reserve a table. We said, “We’ve never taken reservations.” His Secret Service guys said, “You do now.”
What is your relationship to Phyllis Schlafly?
She’s my aunt. She came to my wedding; I went to her 80th-birthday party. I see her a couple of times a year.
Have you ever changed her mind?
No. We pretty much declared a moratorium on talking about politics at family gatherings.
You grew up rich, right?
I grew up comfortable. My great-grandfather put together a St. Louis group that started the Mountain Valley Mineral Water Company. My father had time for civic activities. He was on the St. Louis Board of Education; he was chairman of the board for Saint Louis University. I got from him the idea of civic responsibility.
Most people assume that board service pays off in terms of connections.
We talk about six degrees of separation. In St. Louis, it’s more like one-and-a-half. I was appointed to the library board in 1984 by [former Mayor Vincent] Schoemehl. Bill Kuehling, who worked in Schoemehl’s office, was charged with making appointments, and I had met Bill through Shaw Neighborhood Association activities. Flash forward seven or eight years, and he is the director of public safety for the city, and [the Tap Room] is having a problem with our building inspector over exit-sign placement. I knew Bill, so I called him and said, “All these people report to you. Can you just tell me what we need to do to comply?”
You must know where some of the bodies are buried in this town ...
I hear a lot of rumors, conspiracy theories—but if I’m going to say something damaging, I want to be absolutely positive that it’s the truth. You never know when today’s enemy might be an ally you need tomorrow. And you almost always find out there’s more to the story than you initially think. I don’t know if there’s some kind of secret power structure that runs things behind the scenes. I hear people say “the powers that be.” Who is that? A secret cabal? I think St. Louis is much more disorganized than that.
