Here’s how the bestselling beer in the world became so underappreciated. On a tour of eight essential styles of beer, Anne Becerra – the first female certified cicerone in New York City – begins with Pilsner. She reminds attendees at the 2024 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen that beer is even older than wine, dating back to Mesopotamia. And while it was long a murky, warm, sour form of sustenance that was safer than drinking water, everything changed with the first Pilsner.