Original subtitles

To brew beer, you need barley and yeast, hops, and water.

But more than a century ago,

my grandfather, and after him, my father,

wanted to do more than just brew beer.

They wanted to make a quality product.

And this meant good materials,

advanced brewing methods, thorough research,

and the efforts of a lot of people.

Results came soon. We were getting known,

and we developed into a worldwide enterprise.

What this enterprise looks like, I would like to show you now.

♪ I wished I lived in the Golden Age ♪

♪ Giving it up on the Broadway stage ♪

♪ Hang with the rats and smoke cigars ♪

♪ Have a break with Frank and count the stars ♪

♪ Dressed to the nines with hair to match ♪

♪ Shiny jewels, casino cash

♪ Tapping feet Wanna take the lead ♪

♪ A trip back in time is all I need ♪

♪ Oh, sing it out loud Gonna get back, honey ♪

♪ Sing it out loud Get away with me ♪

♪ Sing it out loud on a trip back, honey ♪

♪ Sing it out loud and let yourself free ♪

♪ Ooh

♪ Ooh, ooh

♪ Ooh, ooh

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh

♪ I'm on my way Gonna make it big ♪

♪ Gonna make these songs for the chicks to dig ♪

♪ It's really hot and a little bit sour ♪

♪ We're getting your strength to maximum power ♪

♪ Flying away from reality

♪ Whatever ever happened to gravity ♪

♪ I see it clear A shooting star ♪

♪ And I'm really good singer like da-da-da ♪

♪ Sing it out loud Gonna get back, honey ♪

♪ Sing it out loud Get away with me ♪

♪ Sing it out loud on a trip back, honey ♪

♪ Sing it out loud and let yourself free ♪

♪ Yeah

♪ Hey

♪ Hey

♪ Ohh

[doorbell rings]

[dog barking]

- Hello. - Hello.

How are you?

[speaking Dutch]

On this location, the brewery of the Haystack

was founded in the 16th century.

It was bought by Gerald Adrien Heineken officially

in 1864.

Heineken, after buying this brewery,

he knew what he wanted.

He already had a vision that he wanted to establish

a new brewery to heighten the quality of beer.

I arrived in the city today.

It's even more than I had dared to hope.

[woman singing]

No need to worry, Mother. I've got my eyes wide open.

[snoring]

Huh?

Beer, please.

Jenever.

I'm sure to find my place here.

It just might take a little time.

To find one's true calling is, as they say,

like searching for a needle in a haystack.

But I'm determined to find it.

It's an incredible opportunity, Mother.

But why not make a partial investment, Gerard?

Why must you buy the whole company?

It has to be all or nothing.

Then you found your needle, after all.

Not yet. But I found a haystack.

Gerald Heineken bought the Haystack.

And the big problem was that a lot of citizens

were complaining about noises and the smell of this brewery.

So Gerald Heineken was forced to leave the Haystack

and to build a new brewery at the Stadhouderskade.

The first brewery that Gerald Heineken built,

you can see right in the middle.

At the right you can see the new production plant.

And that was built in the 30's.

Step up and try the finest new Dutch pilsner!

Heineken's crisp, clear, bottom-fermented

gentleman's beer.

Ms. Tindal.

May a lady sample your gentleman's beer?

Oh, yes.

Of course.

Hmm.

I'd say it has potential.

This is the villa of the family Heineken.

When he built the new Heineken brewery,

he also built this villa.

Right up there,

right from his living room, he could look at the brewery.

That's what I call total control of business.

Not many in the world realize that Heineken beer

is connected with the Heineken family.

A lot of people by the way, internationally,

think that Heineken comes from Germany.

But in Holland, everybody knows,

and the Dutch people are proud of, you know,

Dutch, let's say, brands,

which have been successful internationally.

This conference center is impressive, isn't it?

Look at that building over there. See?

This is the new part of Guangzhou.

Should have come by motorbike.

Back in the old days we used to have the police car, remember?

- A few, yes. - In Shanghai.

With police escorts.

Those days may have passed.

Yes, I think they probably have.

This is very exciting.

It was something we talked about probably about six months ago,

the opening of the Guangzhou brewery

to serve the greater Guangdong province.

Okay, here we are.

This is where it was started.

Some three years ago, we had got this vision

of a two million hectoliter brewery.

That brewery would brew Heineken, Tiger,

and also Anchor brand.

Originally, we do not plan for a big brewery opening.

We'd only been told, let's say, I think two or three months ago

that the Heineken family's coming.

So therefore, we had to quickly scramble for a ceremony.

It's complex because of the size.

The amount of different countries.

Because, unlike Anheuser-Busch,

who basically owned the United States--

one language, one legal system, one taxation system,

one currency, one advertising campaign.

We are in 70 operating companies.

70 operating companies and selling in 180 countries.

It's just a complex-- That's the complexity.

The product is simple.

One product. We're not like Kraft.

We don't do cheese, chocolate,

spreads, processed food.

Just one product.

But our beer would never have become Heineken

without our A-yeast,

which, upon my grandfather's request,

was developed by Dr. Elian in 1886

in this very same small flask.

And it is this A-yeast, which is to a large extent responsible

for the fine taste of our beer.

Do any of you even drink beer?

Pour it in the canal. It is ruined.

Undrinkable!

Tea, Dr. Elion?

No, thank you, Mrs. Heineken.

So you see our problem, Doctor?

Our brewmaster, Mr. Feltman, is a very exacting fellow.

Which is precisely why we hired him.

The trouble is consistency.

We've tried everything.

The latest equipment.

New barrels.

Approved!

We even import ice... from Norway.

But still, it's the yeast that's the problem, Doctor.

What we need is a new strain...

...of yeast to ensure every batch is consistently perfect.

Who's gonna know the difference?

What?! What did you say?!

[horse neighs]

[man groans]

As soon as possible, Doctor.

[crack]

What shall we call it?

I give you... A-Yeast.

♪ [fanfare]

That will do, Doctor.

And the Grand Prix gold medal for best beer

is awarded to Heineken's of Holland.

Congratulations, my love. You finally found your needle.

This is barley.

This is yeast.

These are hops.

This is Heineken.

The Heineken recipe has been around for a long, long time.

Dr. Elion isolated a yeast cell,

which has been kept alive for all that time till now

because yeast grows by cloning itself.

So a yeast is a clone from a clone from a clone.

So that yeast is alive,

and that yeast is the basis for our pilsner.

We're now at the storage of our yeast.

This is a minus-85 Celsius freezer.

We have a monitoring system.

As soon as it hits minus-80 degrees Celsius,

an alarm system will start to work.

It will phone-- The fridge will phone

the responsible person in the laboratory

to come and check what's happening.

But just yeast only is not going to help you.

The combination of the yeast and the raw materials

makes the beer.

This region must be special

because we produce the best hops in the world.

If you drink a Heineken beer,

you will recognize our beautiful hop aroma.

Hops gives the beer a very special flavor and bitterness,

and it makes it beautiful.

You take a cone, roll it in front of your ear,

and if it's sounding like very crispy paper ball,

then it's mature, and then it's ready to harvest.

At the hop farm,

each farmer has a hop picking machine,

where metal fingers strip off and away all the cones.

The cone is the part of the plant where the flavor is.

And these hop cones you put into the kiln,

and after 4 1/2 or 5 hours of drying,

you get ready-dried hops.

If you see a very tiny hop plant,

and after six or seven weeks,

it's grown up to a height of 7 meters.

I look into the nature.

There are so many things which are beyond science.

There are more than 200 different compounds

in the hop cone,

and only 10% is, till now,

explored scientifically.

So there must be something magic around hops.

[speaking French]

We basically start with germinated barley,

which is called malt.

We put the malt into a big vessel,

we add water to it.

Water is the main ingredient, and 95% of the beer is water.

We take in the water, we clean it out,

and then add the salts back, which we need.

The salts, which are in the water,

influence the behavior in the processing.

We increase the temperature step by step.

We also add hops there,

and we want the hops to be transformed

into the nice bitter components that we have in the beer.

We cool it down to 7 degrees.

After that step, we have the sugary liquid called "wort,"

which we want to ferment with our yeast.

When the yeast gets its food, which is the wort,

it sees the sugar and eats,

and then it produces alcohol and carbon dioxide

we need for our beer.

The characteristic smell of Heineken

is a fruity smell, and we call this esters.

And this smell is well-produced by our yeast.

And if you have a vertical tank

with a lot of liquid on top of the yeast,

it makes the smell less easy.

In a horizontal tank, we can guarantee

that the Heineken yeast is producing these esters.

And this is unique to the Heineken world.

This is the bright beer storage.

Bright beer is the beer ready to go in the bottle.

This is the freshest beer possible.

You can't get any fresher beer than this.

I think it's a big thing for us,

not just for ourselves, if I can say so,

I think for the employees of the company as well.

It's not often that you see Mr. and Mrs. Heineken himself.

So I think they are all quite pumped up.

Everybody will be there.

It's also an opportunity for them to ask questions.

I think they have a lot of questions as well.

They want to know where we go from here.

You know, why did we choose Guangzhou.

So we are expecting questions like that.

So, uh...

we're gonna get grilled.

Grilled!

My father, to be fair, did not travel an awful lot

after the age of about 40 or 45.

So in the end, not many people that lived a bit further away

were visited by him.

They might come to Amsterdam,

but he didn't actually go there.

So we're very interested to get to know

our companies and our operations,

and we have, in the last few years,

been to several places around the world

and continue to do so without wanting to disturb anyone

and make a big fuss about us because that's not the idea.

- Hi, good afternoon. - Thank you very much

Thank you very much.

The fact that the Heineken family

are here at the event itself,

it gives a face to the brand, to the company itself.

I think that's good not just for the employees,

but for the market as well.

Mr. de Carvalho.

How do you do, sir? My daughter Louisa.

- Daughter? - Daughter, yes.

Not my second wife.

[laughter]

This is the boss. This is the boss.

He's the banker, so if you need money, you go to him.

If you need beer, you come to me.

[laughter]

- That's how we work. - Exactly.

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.

Welcome to the opening ceremony

of Guangzhou Asia Pacific Brewery.

Today we have friends from around the world,

and we would like to thank you for your support

of Guangzhou Asia Pacific Brewery.

[speaking Chinese]

Mr. Michel de Carvalho, member of the Heineken family.

Family-owned companies are, most of the time,

driven by the passion and the motivation

of the owner and the family.

Mrs. Charlene Heineken, member of the Heineken family.

Mr. van Boxmeer, chairman of the executive board

and CEO of Heineken NV.

Please put your right hand on the handle bar.

5, 4...

3, 2, 1!

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment we've been waiting for is here.

[speaking Chinese]

Our ceremony heralds the arrival of Heineken in Guangzhou

to better provide excellent service

to consumers in South China and the country.

Next, Mr. Malcolm Tan will give a souvenir to Mr. van Boxmeer.

The gift given is a Nanhai model ship.

It symbolizes China's marine silk road and overseas trade.

We hope our historic friendship

will carry on generation to generation.

Very auspicious.

Holland is a small nation at the frontier of a continent,

on the edge of the sea.

Here, the ocean is always present,

pressing in, reminding us of shores beyond our own.

We looked out at the sea and wandered.

We became explorers and travelers,

merchants and traders.

What we at first crafted for our own,

we would share with the world.

And the more we understood just how vast the world really was,

the smaller it became.

He says the boats are ready to go upriver.

Please, lead the way.

But first we have a beer!

It was 50 years ago that my father founded this company,

and as I become its director today,

it's his vision we honor,

and his good beginning we celebrate.

The world will change and grow smaller still.

What will remain is our investment

in a better, more prosperous future

for everyone.

[applause]

Zoeterwoude is actually the biggest brewery

in the Heineken group worldwide

and also the biggest brewery of all the brewers in Europe.

Most of this beer goes to the United States.

We have a brewery, which, in total,

makes about 10 million hectoliters of beer a year.

If you would put all those bottles in a row,

you will have a line which goes around the world four times.

We are talking incredible amounts of beer

that the customers allow us to produce.

Let's put it that way.

If you look at what the Netherlands is,

it's a trades nation.

Early on, people have been sailing all parts of the world.

If you look back in between the two World Wars,

we have been sailing our product

in all the former British and French

and Belgian and Portuguese colonies around the world.

We have been shipping beer to the United States

when prohibition was lifted.

We had Heineken sold in the times of Mao Tse Tung

in Beijing.

We had Heineken sold on draft

in the times of Brezhnev in Hotel Ukraine in Moscow.

So we were a global product long before, again,

long before the world went really global

as we know it today.

Freddy knew Holland as a home base for Heineken is too small.

That means we need a strong position in Europe.

That's our home base.

At the same time, he developed the concept of Fortress Europe.

I had one discussion with Mr. Heineken.

I said, "What do you expect from me on Europe?"

He said, "I want to be the Budweiser of Europe

in 10 years time"

And that was the last instruction I got on Europe.

We had very little there.

We had a brewery, of course, in the Netherlands.

We had a brewery in Greece,

which had been taken over through the Amstel deal,

and we started with France,

then we moved to Italy.

We bought Moretti in Rome and all that sort of thing.

Then we said, "Lets go to Spain," and we got La Aguila.

Then we did the acquisitions in Eastern Europe.

It started with Hungary, Slovakia, and then Poland.

So what you're trying to do

is to find the pearls in other countries,

try to acquire them,

and then together build a string of pearls in Europe.

If everything goes the way I hope it'll go,

the company has ample possibilities

to still grow quite a bit.

If in five years time we could be,

let's say 30 to 40% larger

and more profitable than we are now,

I think it's possible.

We have been also acquiring breweries around the world.

And these breweries, we operate them with local portfolios

because the bulk of the volume is often local brands.

You will see a brand like Zywiec.

It's an iconic and blockbuster brand for Poland.

Or Cristal for Chileans, Tecate for Mexicans

or Sol for people who live in the southern part of Mexico.

Only 15% of our volume is Heineken.

When you go into another country,

you buy a brewery, you buy brands with it.

This is your way to, through their distribution system,

to sell Heineken.

By buying the beer divisions of FEMSA,

overnight we owned Dos Equis, Tecate,

Sol, Bohemia,

a big portfolio of great Mexican beers.

♪ [Spanish]

We exchanged our brewery for Heineken shares.

It was the toughest decision in the history of the company.

We discussed at length this with the family,

with Charlene and Michel and even the kids,

and we asked them, "Would you consider us as your cousins?"

And they said, "Yes, we don't have cousins.

The kids don't have cousins.

We're glad to consider you and your kids as cousins."

And that helped us a lot to make the decision.

And we are now the second largest shareholder of Heineken.

And of course each time you open up new territories,

you make sure that you not just impose your own culture, no.

You blend in the cultures in your culture.

If you think that out of an office in Amsterdam

you can decide how the company should be managed in Greece

Or in Romania or in Vietnam

or in Indonesia or in Nigeria,

you're fooling yourself.

Ladies and gentlemen, please, your eye line, right here.

I think where we can be slightly different from other companies

is that we can have a longer-term view,

whereas sometimes a totally public company

has more pressure to perform quickly.

So this is, I think, important.

[speaking Dutch]

Mr. Heineken was not traveling a lot.

He was not meeting that many people.

He was very famous,

whereas Charlene and Michel, they travel all over the world.

They make eye-to-eye contact

with much more people in the company.

So Michel and Charlene, they developed, I think,

their own genuine style.

To meet her, for people around the world, is a joy.

Not because they knew her father, many of them,

but it's an absolute joy to think there is somebody

who's part of this brewery

and whose great grandfather in 1864 started the business.

And I think it's something Heineken has an advantage of

because there isn't a Mr. Foster and there isn't a Mr. Carlsberg.

Thank you. I hope to see you soon.

Thank you. You have a great team here.

Soon. Sooner than three years later.

Okay.

Time to party.

[laughter]

Good job.

[exhales]

♪

This container also contains a special present

for yourself, Leo.

A few years ago, you and I made a bet

about how many cans of Heineken beer you would sell

in the United States.

My estimation turned out to be too optimistic,

so you won the bet.

It was stupid of me to make this bet in the first place

because, after all, it's your organization,

thus you, yourself,

who decided how many cans you were going to sell,

- so how could I win? - [laughter]

Get the map. Ask me another one.

- Please! - Pick one.

- Kansas. - Topeka.

Hah!

How do we know if Americans still have a taste for beer?

Every state with its own capital.

Would they have ended prohibition if they didn't?

Still, that's no guarantee they'll drink Heineken's.

What we need in America

is someone who knows how to sell beer.

May I recommend Heineken's?

Someone who believes in the product.

All I ever drink myself.

Someone who can talk to people.

Drink a real beer before you get to America.

Yes, sir?

I'm Stikker. This is Mr. Feith.

What's your name, my good man?

Leo van Munching, sir.

Tell me, Leo, have you ever been to Topeka?

Not to worry, gentlemen! This used to be New Amsterdam!

America's going to love us!

Imported? No!

Never heard of it.

How am I supposed to sell that?

How much?

Don't you know there's a depression on?

Hey, got a dime?

No, but I've got beer.

Ah! To you, sir. A scholar and a gentleman.

I'm neither, I'm afraid.

Say, where'd you get this stuff?

- I'm a failure. - Oh, from Holland.

I'm not cut out for America.

Hey, pal, America's not so hard to figure.

You can be anything.

You just gotta know who you are and what you want.

And who are you, my friend?

Me? I'm drinking the best of beers.

Tonight I'm a millionaire.

It's the best of beers.

I'll take 20 cases.

Your attention for this special announcement.

German forces have begun their invasion of Dutch territory.

All citizens are advised to take immediate precautions.

After the Second World War was over,

Heineken has been very active building a lot of breweries.

We entered Nigeria, French Congo, Belgian Congo,

Rwanda, Burundi between 1948 and 1958.

It pays off that we stayed, as Heineken,

we stayed committed in difficult years.

Not only because we have a business opportunity there,

but also for the people we had there.

Beer culture has always been there.

They were making beer already before we knew how to make it.

So we feel, if you are in a big African country,

as an international, of course you are here to make money.

But if you make money in such a way

that you can spread the money in investment, raw materials,

jobs, training, education, health.

Those are all the elements we work on.

Yeah, well, here you see the real old, traditional,

beautiful brew house.

This copper brewery, you'll find it all over Africa still.

In Nigeria, here in the DRC,

and you will see a lot of the same design in a brew house.

This lauter tun is real.

The traditional lauter tun as we had it 40, 50 years ago.

So within Heineken, I'm pretty sure this is the last brew house

which still operates with the manual lauter tun process.

These type of breweries, I always like to compare

to a ship on the high sea.

It is there, it cannot get help.

So you got engineers on board

who have to repair machines which break down.

So they got their own people making spare parts,

getting the things to work,

otherwise they cannot reach the shore.

So here we make ice blocks.

That's for our clients to serve cold beer

In the city, there is no power.

That's why we produce ice

to sell to them.

So here we see a truck with big ice blocks.

We have four lines that produce ice.

We can make 3, 4,000 blocks every day.

And also these trucks leave early in the morning

to deliver them to the big bars and other points

where then people come to collect to put them in their bar

or in their icebox.

- Bonjour. - Bonjour.

[speaking French]

We gotta make sure that all our beers are of impeccable quality.

We take samples directly from the brewery.

And we also collect samples anonymously,

and they're sent to our central lab,

and they are analyzed.

Not only of the Heineken brands,

but also of all our local brands.

So all 235 brands are centrally controlled.

[Speaking Dutch]

Well, this is the room of the gas chromatograph olfactory,

or the "nose" machine.

And we are measuring compounds of beer.

The quality awards,

awards for breweries who do this at their best.

And breweries are very competitive in getting there.

The one who is most consistent in performing

is Vietnam breweries.

This is Mr. Hu.

Mr. Hu is an expert on the biochemistry of beer.

He is our secret weapon for producing

the best beer on earth.

Here at the central lab of the brewery,

we perform three kinds of tests:

the physical-chemical,

the microbiological,

and the taste test.

Every batch of beer you drink,

we perform more than 200 analyses.

[Vietnamese accent]

[speaking Chinese]

[Polish accent]

[Speaking Polish]

[Speaking Polish]

The Caledonia Brewery as it is at the moment,

we've been lucky to inherit these coppers,

and we see no reason to change it.

Produces a very distinct flavor in the beer,

a caramelization of the sugars,

and the way the wort boils into the hops

gives it a very distinct flavor.

You can see the constraints of the brewery.

I can almost describe it as dungeons and dragons.

Very traditional,

gravity orientated, traditional brewing methods.

From the outset, the first Heineken representative

that came to the site liked the brewery

and liked the beer that we produce here.

At no time have they told us to change the style of the beer

that we're doing.

For us, as sort of old Scottish Newcastle employees,

people always said Heineken made it very easy to do business

because it's warm, it's friendly,

it's still a family business.

The only annoying thing is you go to the Netherlands,

and they speak better English than you, but...

[laughs]

If you are not renewing yourself,

you risk to become your father's beer.

You're too late.

So, yes, you're the beer of the father,

but you must be attractive for the son as well.

We start engaging in a sort of daily conversation

on Twitter, on Facebook.

So that type of thing we can post about something,

which is happening somewhere.

And that's a fantastic way for people around the world

to connect with each other,

as well to share experiences between the different countries.

Sponsorship is a very specific art

because, on the one hand, you would say

why don't you stick to the traditional advertising.

On the other hand, being a beer brand,

you want to be part of the conversation.

And sport is you're talking to the passion of the people.

And sponsoring, in general, is that.

So it's music and sport and film.

There's not a day that goes by

that Heineken's not involved with festivals.

Being part of a music festival as a consumer

is always a very important moment in your life.

So that's a moment with a lot of social interactions.

That's a moment which is pretty intense

because you are going to watch the band that you are fond of.

But the most important thing is, how do you activate it?

It's not just plastering your name on an event.

You must prove to consumers that being part of that event

makes it better.

The final of the Champions League

is one of the biggest single sporting events in the world.

People are living it, staying awake for it,

and we are part of that.

And having properties like the Champions League,

like Rugby World Cup,

like the Heineken St. Maarten Regatta,

that is something that Heineken only can do.

The U.S. Open is a huge, massive, upscale social event

in New York, in the month of September

that Heineken wants to be part of.

Those are the things.

So if we go in there, we go in there big.

[speaking Dutch]

Yeah! [laughs]

Yes!

[shatters]

If you look back on the 47 years you've spent in this company,

what has been your greatest contribution

to the success of it?

My contribution to its success is actually an accident.

The fact that my parents thought it was a good idea

to send me to the United States,

where I lived for close to three years,

selling beer and going around,

going to school a little bit, too.

And when I came back, I'd seen the future.

I'd seen everybody had refrigerators.

Many people were starting to have televisions.

Supermarkets existed, liquor stores, specialty stores,

all the kind of things we'd hardly seen here.

The difficulty was when I came back here

that I believed that Europe and the world

would slowly start looking like America.

Everybody said, "You're crazy. It's never gonna happen.

But if you look around now, it certainly--

Los Angeles and Amsterdam look a lot more alike

than they did in 1932.

That I can promise you.

So you had seen the future already more or less,

so it must have been an easy task for you.

No, it was easy to know what I wanted,

but it was more difficult to convince a lot of people.

After all, I was 24 years old,

and when you're 20 years old, you're obviously an idiot.

Mr. Stikker.

Freddy, your father needs to see you.

Papa!

I thought if I could just keep the breweries

open through the war,

if we could just outlast it, I could save the company.

But you did, Papa. The war is over.

- We're still here. - Freddy, listen to me.

The company will go on, but...

it will not be for us to decide how it will grow.

- Not for us? - The capital increases.

These new taxes. It's impossible.

What, Papa?

I couldn't afford to keep it, Freddy.

I had to sell the family share.

It's not ours to control anymore.

I'd like to have seen what you would have done with it.

I'm sorry.

The board will see you now.

Unfortunately, Freddy, at this time...

We just don't see a place for you at the brewery.

In Holland, that is.

At least for the time being.

However, there may be one opportunity for you.

We think you'd be better suited for America.

Hey, Joe, how's business?

Better every day. Friend of yours is here.

Freddy!

Let me introduce you. Lucille Cummins, family friend.

We were just having a drink.

I'm Alfred. Everyone calls me Freddy.

Hello, Freddy.

Why don't I get us another round?

Care to dance?

We're going to miss you, Freddy.

I've got some business back home.

Freddy, the board doesn't want you in Holland.

If you go back, what do you think they're gonna let you do?

You'll be reviewing loan requests.

Now, if you look in...

Dear Papa, now that I've returned to Holland,

the board doesn't know what to do with me.

So they've exiled me to a bank.

"Work placement training," they're calling it.

Far from the brewery.

My intention is to try, during my lifetime,

to ensure that ownership of the brewery

is returned to our family.

So I've set up a company

to quietly purchase Heineken shares.

until we own a majority stake once more.

I know this is a very ambitious plan

since it requires borrowing a great deal of money.

And perhaps even bluffing a little.

When your name's at stake, you don't want other people

to start doing strange things with it.

Freddy?

All or nothing.

I went with a friend to California

because we had not seen California.

I haven't seen these albums for so long.

This is New York, I think. I don't know.

Then, in the course of going out and seeing the world,

I met Freddy.

I was out with a friend. He knew the friend,

and the friend, he came in to say hello,

and the friend said, "Oh, please come and have dinner with us."

So he did.

Then the telephone calls came and what have you,

and all of a sudden, you were out with Freddy.

He said, after a few days, "I'm going to marry you."

And I said, "Well..." [laughs]

And that was a year-and-a-half, and we did do it.

He was a good talker. He was a very good talker.

I would say that Freddy Heineken was probably,

at every stage of his life,

20 to 30 years ahead of his peers.

Because, probably, his years in America,

he got an insight in what marketing could be

for a beer brand in a very particular way.

Transforming of the color code, he opted for green.

The smiling E's in "Heineken,"

making it a much more friendly appearance

than the old straight-letter types

were kind of landmark changes to our brand.

I had just come back from my honeymoon,

which was only about a week.

And my mother called me at about 7:30 in the evening

and said they think your father may have been kidnapped.

[speaking Dutch]

We were at my mother-in-law's house,

which, within hours,

was like a fortress under siege with cameras

because it's a big story,

you know, the kidnapping of Freddy Heineken.

There were people on the floor sleeping here, you know.

That room over there,

in the biblioteque, whatever you call it,

was where the high command was, you know.

All sorts of wires and things,

and then the waiting for telephone calls, you know.

[speaking Dutch]

After all the negotiations,

then we had the trouble that they were not released,

although the money was dropped,

and it was a hell of a lot of money at the time.

The break came when the police were told by someone

that they thought that he was being kept

in a particular warehouse.

They went in the evening,

and they went right through this timber factory

and didn't find anything.

One of the policemen tripped over,

did this, and felt a seam in the wall,

and that was the hidden door.

And behind that hidden door were the two bunkers.

And they found them.

[speaking Dutch]

I was in New York one morning in a hotel,

and I was having coffee before setting off for a meeting,

and on the news it came up that he'd been found and he was safe.

And I thought, "What a relief. What a fabulous thing."

So I finished my coffee,

and I thought I'll ring him in a few days.

And the phone rang, and I picked up, and he said,

"Oh, hello, Frank. It's Freddy"

And he had this wonderful English voice.

I said, "Good God, I've just seen on the television.

You're safe, Freddy" I said, "Are you all right?"

He said, "Well, you know, they tortured me."

I don't know what you would say to somebody who says that.

I said, "Freddy, I don't remember. Was it terrible?"

He said, "Yes, they made me drink Carlsberg!"

And that was Freddy all over.

Even in the-- Now I'm sure he sat there waiting to be found,

thinking up his jokes that he would make.

But he was a wonderful man, and I really grew to love him.

Ad men don't say that about clients very often.

I grew to love him,

and we became friends until he sadly died.

I smile when I think of Freddy.

I just smile.

I must say that I still refer quite often to him.

Also, of business discussions,

then I think, at least, "What would Freddy have done?"

Because he has had an enormous influence in this company,

and he was wise,

and so is Charlene.

There's a huge amount of pride

and a huge amount of will to keep this going,

but I do feel very much that it's not really mine.

It's not my company.

It's something that was handed to me,

and which I will be trying to hand on,

if I can manage that.

But it doesn't feel like mine, as such.

It's everybody's, you know. It's everybody who made it.

It's everybody who works in it,

and I'd like to see it continue like that.

Companies need to continuously-- like families-- rejuvenate.

That's why you're here.

You're the next generation of Heineken.

You're the fifth generation.

I'm relying on you as the core.

Charlene and I will be looking down one day at you,

as Graddles is probably looking down at us right now,

sitting here in the pub,

hopefully saying, "At least they're trying.

At least they're trying."

We are in many countries where we feel, as brewers,

to be in a privileged position,

and the people who work in the brewery

are in a privileged position because they get medical help,

they get a good salary,

they are in a protected environment.

But around that, you see that there is a lot of needs.

♪ [women singing]

[Nigerian accent]

We have among us today, my brothers and sisters,

the granddaughter of Heineken is here.

Granddaughter of Heineken is with us here,

all the way from Holland.

So, please, ladies and gentlemen, take it easy.

Pregnant women first.

Pregnant women first.

I'm very pleased about the level of healthcare

we're offering in Africa.

But there's not too many companies

where the global health aspect

is so much taken in account.

It's not just about selling as much as possible

or having as much as possible, dividends.

It's also the way you operate in a society.

These people you save the lives of is quite important.

I think we've set an example in, for instance, HIV,

our workplace programs.

We were very progressive in that,

in the sense that NGOs and other employers

in the Third World and low-income countries

would come to us and try to learn

from how we implemented things,

and people hearing and saying,

"Well, if Heineken can do it, why can't we do it?"

Nigeria is the home of Star.

It means a lot to Nigerians

because it's the first locally-brewed lager

this country ever had.

So for Nigerians, it's the tradition.

The unique ingredient is

a locally grown grain called sorghum,

grown using local farmers.

We provide them with seeds,

and we buy back the grains at the end.

It's also a way of giving back to the community.

It's something of pride, you know, to be part of that.

What matters most should be to run a business

in a sustainable way

while holding on to the family values.

So, sustainability is key

because we know it's the only thing that ensures

we're going to be there tomorrow.

Besides sponsoring and selling beer and having fun, of course,

as a part of this community,

we feel responsible for people coming here

and for the environment around us.

We use Alco-Goggles.

When you see through the goggles,

you see the world around you in a way,

for example, that you already had 10 beers.

- Hi. - Hello.

What are you doing?

Where are you from?

- From here. - From Poland.

Because when you drink alcohol in a slow way,

you don't feel the changes, you know, in your body,

in the way you walk, for example.

But when you are sober, completely sober,

and then you put 10 glasses of beer, you know, on your eyes,

it changes the view of people, really.

Our guests drink in a responsible way.

They are safe, and the field is clean,

and all of the plastic that is used for the festival

is recycled.

So here in Sao Paulo, sustainability is a reality.

We partner with recycling centers around the country.

[speaking Portuguese]

I just like Heineken and like making things out of its cans.

When the big Heineken keg can came out,

I was like, "It would be cool to make a plane out of that,"

or something that took me a minimal amount of time.

And then I was like, "Let's go bigger."

What's bigger? I don't know, a pirate ship.

So my mind just kinda goes, and I'll flow with it, I guess.

Whatever.

Well, the main base in the middle is the large keg can,

and most of these other ones are all 16-ounce labels

that I cut out of the middle of the 16-ounce cans

and drilled holes through

and used wire to connect them with Krazy Glue.

That's where the little Heineken crewman would be,

looking out for other Heineken ships.

[chuckles]

I was actually in Amsterdam

and I'm like, "I'm going to the Heineken brewery.

It's gonna be excellent."

I'd been waiting for this day.

And so we get there, and I'm like, "All right!"

And it's closed for renovations.

I wanted to cry. It was so horrible.

I was like, "Why you doing this to me?"

I definitely want to go back first chance I can.

Hi. Patrick Bennis.

- Nice to meet you. - Jan Stabij.

This used to be Mr. Heineken's desk.

He was always sitting like this, looking out of the window.

[speaking Dutch]

Beer me! [laughs]

[phone ringing]

[speaking Dutch]

I got ideas flowing now, man. You see this? This is nuts!

[speaking Dutch]

Human beings have been drinking beer for 6,000 years.

There must be something right about it.

[shouting, laughing]

The wonderful thing about beer is it brings people together.

It's a social drink.

People talk over it, people celebrate with it,

people share their problems over a beer

or share their successes over a beer.

I like to think of brewers as alchemists.

You're taking this base product and turning it into liquid gold.

There's a science to it, absolutely.

Some brewers were the first scientists.

But at the same time, there's a craft.

There's an art there that comes from passion,

from individuality.

You associate the production of beer

with almost old-fashioned values.

You know, this stuff about the yeast,

I have no idea, when I read about it,

what they're talking about, but I know it sounds jolly good.

For me, of course, it was my name, first of all,

and I didn't really think of it as a brand for a while,

and then eventually it became clear that it was a brand to me

as I grew up.

It's probably different for me than it is for other people.

[applause]

[shouting]

I think it's very important that people understand

what they're apart of and feel connected somehow.

Their name is on the bottle.

That's what makes it so special.

There are 90,000 people around the world

who are very passionate about that name.

We often refer to our green blood.

You can cut us into pieces, you will see green blood.

That is what we share.

Put her there.

[laughs]

What's this new thing? We haven't done that before.

The magic will continue.

Freddy's gone. Now there will be another generation.

[laughs]

Hello. Are we being recorded?

To me, it was something we're all very proud of.

I know my father was a difficult man about quality.

It was very important to him that it was properly made,

that it went all over the world.

He was a great believer in the world being one.

And I think that he thought that people, you know,

should just all get together over a drink

and a good piece of music, and then, you know,

everything's going to be alright.

In this kind of company,

there has to be someone that feels and leads the company.

Here we go.

And worries about what happens with the people that work there.

Half of my time is traveling the world around.

It's what you have to do

if you want to be in touch with local cultures

and also the local people who make it happen.

And when there's a good glass of beer,

you speak all languages of the world.

We know that we work with a company

that is taking good care of us,

so we give it our best.

Yeah, that's the Heineken blood.

You wanna cut?

[speaking Dutch]

Okay.

Mmm!

So...