Yeast has just as much "sense of place" and "terroir" as influences wine. Starting yeasts generally come prepackaged from just a few mass factories and the vast

Yeast has just as much "sense of place" and "terroir" as influences wine. Starting yeasts generally come prepackaged from just a few mass factories and the vast majority of brewers just rely on that. Not enough brewers appreciate "sourdough" styles of beer that rely on local wild forms of yeast (and to be fair, in many regions of the world the local wild yeasts are poorly adapted for brewing and need a lot of work to get there), but yeast is such a short-lived organism that it adapts quickly to the environments you give it and what you feed it even when you are using fresh packets directly from the national factory as a baseline every brewing session. Local brewers with even the smallest bit of Belgian influence often have at least some small idea of this. Brewers that enjoy exploring styles known as "farmhouse" or "spontaneous" or "common" are generally exploring truly local beers in both flavor profiles and execution. If brewing was as lucrative as fancy wines, you'd probably hear a lot more about breweries staffing local yeast experts and building yeast labs the way fancy vineyards hire soil experts. (I do know of at least a couple that do. New Glarus is a stand out for a number of reasons, including that their commitment to local also means that they never distribute beer outside of Wisconsin.)