60 Minutes - 60 Minutes Presents: Cheers!

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

On this week's "60 Minutes Presents," Europe's wine industry being altered by climate change. Lesley Stahl reports. British pubs were on the decline before COVID-19 and the pandemic looked to be last call for these cornerstones of British community life. But as the pandemic winds down and England reopens, the British are realizing just how much they missed their locals. Jon Wertheim tells us more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice Caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side, or B-side, or Bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled rib-eye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Tonight on this special edition of 60 Minutes Presents, cheers. 60 Minutes traveled to Europe to find out how extreme weather is affecting some of the most famous wines in the world. How many bottles were you able to produce? A normal year, I produce around 40,000, 50,000 bottles. This year, zero. Climate change has affected many of France's vintages severely. Its economy, too.

But in rainy old England, across the Channel, we found a very different story. Do you think that wine lovers around the world already know that great wines are coming out of England? In other words, is it ooh-la-la, no more, it's jolly good? In a changing Britain, nostalgia can reside at the bottom of a glass. In the oh-so-English village of Aldworth in Berkshire, you'll find just a cricket green, a church, a few houses, and a pub resistant to time. The Bell Inn has been in the family of Heather McCauley for 200 years. We've talked to some pub owners who've said they felt this pressure to evolve

and they're trying gourmet food and DJs and technology. Well, I don't even have a mobile phone. You've got unlimited access to music, but time? Now that's limited. The PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard gets you unlimited PC Optimum points, free grocery delivery, and time back for what matters. Save time and earn $1,100 in average value each year. The PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard. The card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. Value is for illustrative purposes only.

Good evening. Welcome to 60 Minutes Presents. I'm Leslie Stahl. Tonight we raise a glass and lift a pint to offer cheers to the venerable English pub, but we begin with the wine industry. What are the signs of global warming? Glaciers are melting at an increasingly rapid pace. Persistent droughts are spreading. And we have another to tell you about, wine, as in what you might crack open for Valentine's Day tomorrow. Farmers who grow the grapes have seen the effects of climate change in the soil, in the roots of the vines, and the yields of their crops. France, a major center of winemaking for centuries, is experiencing increasingly higher temperatures and extreme weather conditions that have damaged vintages and livelihoods.

This past year was particularly dramatic. France recorded its smallest harvest since 1957 and stands to lose more than $2 billion in sales, a huge blow to the country's second-largest export industry. And as we first reported in December, it's hitting nearly all the wine-growing regions where they make dry whites, fruity reds, and fizzy champagne. All bubblies are called sparkling wine, but champagne is made here and nowhere else in these vineyards and villages of Champagne

located in northeastern France. There's a mystique to Champagne, an aura of romance. Coco Chanel once said, I only drink Champagne on two occasions, when I'm in love and when I'm not. They've been producing this wine of kings here for centuries. So how long has this winemaking business and the vineyards been in your family? From 1700. 1700? Yes. Christine Saviano took over the family business and it's 20 acres of vines 14 years ago. She's the 10th generation. This is the cellar of my grandfather.

After surviving the French Revolution and two world wars, her family's house of Pio Seviano faced its worst year ever in 2021. We lost 90% of our harvest. 90% of our harvest. 90%? Yes. How many bottles were you able to produce this year, as opposed to a normal year? A normal year, I produce around 40,000, 50,000 bottles.

This year? Zero. It's the first time in the history of my winery that we will not make champagne. Not a single bottle from this winery. Yes. Higher temperatures and extreme weather episodes devastated not only her harvest, but much of Champagne's. It rained in two or three days that it rained normally in one month. Even my father told me that in his career he has never seen that. Almost flood-like?

Yes. The worst of it, she says, came in June and July, when the heat and the rains resulted in a more crippling outbreak than usual of funguses, like mildew contamination. In fact, when the grapes are contaminated, the fruit is drying, and after we can use it because there is no juice, nothing. And you attribute this to climate change? Yes, because it was so extreme. It's not normal.

Last year's extreme weather not only battered Champagne and the foundation of its economy, but nearly every one of the wine-producing regions in France, Burgundy to Bordeaux, where some of the highest quality, best known, and best tasting reds and whites are made. And these are what grape? This is Merlot. Merlot. Yes. I love Merlot. Yeah, Merlot makes a beautiful, soft, rounded wines. Jacques Lerton, the head of a wine family dynasty, runs the Chateau La Louvière and several other wineries in Bordeaux. He says vine disease is getting worse all over France because of the rising temperatures. We don't have winters anymore, almost. In wintertime, normally you get cold conditions.

These cold conditions tend to kill the funguses or the disease. So normally winter cleans the situation, you see. But the most important problem that we have is what we call spring frost. Spring frost was so severe in April that wine growers were on their knees lighting bales of hay and candles between their vines in a mostly futile attempt to protect their young buds. It is the largest catastrophe we have ever suffered, because before we had some spring frost in some regions, but this is the first time we have it all over France.

Now, due to the fact that we don't have these very strong winters, the buds start to open and then expose themselves to these series of spring frost that we have. And that is the crux of it. And that is what affects the most the quantity of grapes. So tell us about this year in terms of the amount. In average, in France this year, a loss of 30%.

30% of the yields. And what about you? What's your percent? ANTONIO BORDEAU And us, we have been affected up to 40 percent. JUDY WOODRUFF So you're one of the largest wine producers in Bordeaux. Forty percent loss, I mean, that's enormous. ANTONIO BORDEAU It's huge. It's huge.

JUDY WOODRUFF For Bordeaux, he estimates a loss of roughly $800 million in sales last year. Is this something that's happening all over Europe or just France? No, it's happening all over Europe, definitely. Greg Jones is a research climatologist with Southern Oregon University who for 25 years has specialized in the study of how climate influences the growing and harvesting of wine grapes. What we're seeing today is we're seeing more of these extreme events happening more frequently at greater degrees and causing more problems.

Yeah, we see it everywhere. It's not just in farm regions. I mean, every part of our country is experiencing some extreme weather condition. So how do you know it isn't that normal extreme weather as opposed to a general climate change? There's an area in climate science called attribution science. And attribution science is all about trying to kind of understand how much role humans have in the game of climate. So the idea of... Who to attribute it to. Yeah. And so what climatologists do is we develop models that look at aspects of climate and those models that are coming out

are really telling us more and more that in the absence of humans, most of these things would not occur to the same degree they're occurring today. Tie what you're saying about climate to what's going on in France now. Sure. In France, just like most of Europe, temperatures have gone up, summers have gotten drier, and wine grapes are just sensitive.

They're sensitive to those kind of changes, and we've been seeing it worldwide, and Europe has been at the epicenter of it. This weather map of Europe for June 2021, the second warmest June in Europe on record, shows a red band depicting high surface air temperatures stretching across much of the continent. Heat waves were also recorded over western North America in June 2021. Scorching temperatures and drought conditions contributed to wildfires in 2020 around Napa and Sonoma, the center of America's wine industry, where fields were left blackened. In Australia, the bushfires of 2019 and 20 burnt some vineyards to the ground, while smoke ruined the quality of the grapes. In 2017, in Italy, spring frost combined with hailstorms and a heat wave known as lucifer led to the lowest harvest in decades. Particularly hard hit was northern and central Italy, where Prosecco, Barolo, and Chianti are made. And in parts of Chile and Argentina,

higher temperatures are pushing wine growers to plant their vineyards at higher altitudes where temperatures are cooler. Greg Jones says the warming atmosphere is also changing the grapes' growth cycle. It accelerates that ripening to the point that we're picking earlier. For example, 2020 in Burgundy, the picking date was August 20th.

And prior to that, we've been averaging for the last 30 years about September 15th. And then for 600 years before that, we were averaging the end of September, 1st of October. So it's dramatic. So it's pretty dramatic. These pages of parchment documenting harvest dates going back as far as 1354 were found in the Church of Notre Dame in Burgundy. 1354. It's a wonderful data record that we've been able to look at to better understand

what climates were like back then, how it affected harvests and what that looks like today. I'm smiling because I'm thinking 1300s. I'm thinking the monks were making wine. Well, exactly. The wine industry in France is so vital to the economy that the government has scientists studying ways to adapt and mitigate the changing environment. One route to adaptation is to introduce new grape varieties. Experimental vineyards have been planted with vines from warmer climate countries to see if they can grow here so the grapes can be blended in

with the Merlots, Cabernets, and other French wines. Nathalie Ola is the director of the project at the Bordeaux Science Institute of Vine and Wine. So you're looking at grapes that come from southern regions that maybe grow better in warmer climates. Yes. Like from where? From Spain, from Portugal, from Greece. How many are you actually looking at? So in this experimental video, we are studying 52 different varieties.

They've chosen six of those varieties thus far to be planted in Bordeaux. So this is your greenhouse? Yes, it is. A second route of adaptation is genetic breeding. Are you actually creating new grapes, new different kinds of grapes? Yes.

The idea is to have grapes, new varieties, which can be resistant to disease and also more adapted to climate change conditions. And do not compromise the distinctive qualities of the French wines. At the Institute's laboratory, scientists are studying the genetics of wines' color, aroma, and taste. And that's what you're trying to preserve even as you introduce new grapes. Yes, I think we want to change without changing, I would say. Yes. How confident are you that you're going to crack the puzzle, you're going to figure

out how to stay ahead of climate change. All together, with new varieties, new growing practice, I think we can cope with climate change at least until the middle of the 21st century. The middle of the century is only 30 years from now. Yeah, yeah. So you're looking at how fast temperatures are rising, and you're saying it's possible

that they will rise above a point where you can't. It will be much more complicated to keep what we call Bordeaux style and Bordeaux taste. With all the gloom and doom about warming temperatures in wine country, there's actually a surprising upside. What about quality? What about the taste? What's important about wine? How is climate change affecting that? The climate change is affecting the quality very positively.

Positively? Yes, exactly. We have never seen such a large quantity of good vintages of border wines. Well, explain that. That's counterintuitive. Thanks to the global warming and the climate change, now we have warmer summers, which makes that our grapes are ripening better. If we get good warm conditions, we have good color quantity in the skin,

but as well, we have the right amount of sugar. What a painful irony. The taste improves just as the yields are shrinking for winemakers like Christine Sevillano. So more quality, but fewer grapes, dramatically fewer grapes. Yes, it's crazy. If you have another year like this one, financially, can you survive? It will be difficult, really, really difficult. But in the same time, I'm trustful for next year.

I mean, I try, I'm trustful, I have to. Improved taste is not the only unforeseen benefit of climate change for some winemakers. How it's affecting the bubbly you're likely to enjoy at the next party or wedding you attend when we return. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping, history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. For some wine growers, climate change has been a

disaster as we've seen. But as it turns out, climate change has been a boon for others. While higher temperatures have hurt growers in parts of France and Italy, places that historically have been too cold to produce quality wines are now turning out consistently good ones. For instance, as we first reported in December, the idea that there's no such thing as a velvety, well-balanced, first-rate wine made in England is woefully outdated. Today, a new industry has taken root. Healthy vineyards in England are producing some of the world's best wines. This sprawling vineyard, with acres and acres of wine grapes ready for harvest, is located in Kent, 40 miles outside of London. It didn't exist 15 years ago, but Great Britain's

wine-producing fortunes have been heating up along with the planet. So how has climate change affected the grapes, the wine in this region? Well, it's completely revolutionized it. Stephen Skelton, a member of the highly respected Institute of Masters of Wine, is a viticulturist, an expert in the science, production, and business of wine grapes. I never heard of really good English wine. No, it was very, very rare until we realized that you could grow these classic French champagne varieties in our climate. This is what they grow in Champagne?

And they now grow very, very successfully here in the UK. What used to be a minute cottage industry run by retirees and gentleman farmers is today one of the fastest wine-growing regions in the world. This is quite an operation going on. It's a big winery. In 2018, the vintage in England was so bountiful that some vineyards had to scramble to buy vats and tanks to hold it all. Others simply threw grapes away.

By the end of the decade, winemakers here will produce an estimated 20 million bottles a year. Now, the foundation of today's industry is the fact that we can grow these varieties which we couldn't grow earlier. So why couldn't you do it before? Because the climate was too cold. You just had to get the temperature up. Yeah. So does global warming mean that England now has more days for the grapes to ripen? Yeah, because we have

more days over 85, 86 degrees Fahrenheit. We are in the UK now. We're now where Champagne was 30 or 40 years ago. The climate has shifted in 30 or 40 years upwards, northwards. So the climate right now where you and I are sitting in England is the same as the climate was 40 years ago in France. In Champagne, yeah. He traces the birth of the industry here to 1988. Then there came two Americans, the Mosses, Stewart and Sandy Moss.

They bought an estate called Night Timber, which is very well known today. And they were the first people to plant a big commercial vineyard. What did you think? I thought they were bonkers. I have to say, yeah, I thought they were nuts. I'd heard they were rich Americans up in the hills.

He had a fortune from, from apparently from the dental business. And I thought they were mad. Their first wine took a long while to mature. It was four years in the making before it was tasted. And then it won this major prize. Right away? Four years? Yeah, yeah. And the second year, the next year, they won an even bigger prize.

Are you thinking that in a couple of years, the English sparkling wine will be actually better than what they're growing in Champagne? As they produce 300 million bottles a year, the best is still very, very good. The best is superb. But you could line up the best 10 English sparkling wines against the best 10 Champagnes at the same sort of price category.

I can guarantee you that English wines would be in the top half. To prove his point, he gave us a taste, opening a 10-year-old bottle. We're going to open it professionally. Oh, no pop. No pop. Look at that. The longer sparkling wine ages, he says, the better. And what you look for is the spritz of fizz on the palate.

You see you've got the bubbles coming from there. And that's a good thing. Yeah, you see they're nice and small. And then you nose it. You get a nice yeasty character. Bacon bread, brioche as we call it. And that's a gorgeous, gorgeous bottle of wine. Winston Churchill once said, I could not live without champagne. In victory, I deserve it.

In defeat, I need it. Well, nothing would have pleased him more than to hear that because English bubbly is now so good, the House of Tattinger, one of the most prestigious of French champagne makers, is in England. It's now growing 120 acres of grapes and is making sparkling wine near Canterbury in what's known as the Garden of England. Patrick McGrath, who represents Tattinger in Great Britain, persuaded the company to invest here in 2015. Have you brought the grapes from France? Yeah, the vines were imported from France as tiny little vines. And the first crop we had from them was in 2020. And then that wine will be released at the end of 2024.

You know, in France, part of the problem is not just warming. It's extreme weather conditions. You know, too much flooding, too much frost, too hot. Won't England also have extreme situations like that? Not at the moment. We're fortunate. You know, England is coming onto the radar as being an area that is warming, but is still moderate in terms of heat

compared to South and Central Europe, where it's becoming very, very hot. Do you think that wine lovers around the world already know that great wines are coming out of England? In other words, is it ooh-la-la, no more, it's jolly good? I think it was still in the starting block. But certainly, yes, over the last 10 years, from a small base, the sales of English have been growing substantially. Tattinger's aim is to produce 300,000 bottles a year by 2025. Overall, the English wine industry had $220 million in sales in 2020. The idea of first-rate English wine would have been laughed at 20 years

ago. But a similar migration has happened on the west coast of the United States, where excellent and increasingly popular Pinot and Chardonnay grapes are now found 560 miles north of Napa in Willamette Valley, Oregon. In the 1950s and 60s, there were really almost no grapes grown in Oregon. And that was because the climates were too cold. And so if you fast forward to where we are today, we're just in a different world. Greg Jones, a wine climatologist at Southern Oregon University, says grapes are now growing in even more unexpected places. We have wineries today in Norway, in Quebec, in British Columbia, in Tasmania,

and the South Islands of Chile. Tasmanian wine. Yeah, Tasmania is really, and burgeoning, is really a great wine producing region in Australia. Oh, well, that's interesting. Tasmania is south of Australia. So as winemaking goes north in the northern hemisphere, are you saying it's going south in the southern hemisphere?

Yeah, it's going further poleward in both hemispheres, in parts of southern Argentina and Chile, and many parts of northern Europe have started growing grapes. In real time. In real time. In real time. So if you really want a very vivid, now, example of what's happening due to climate change, go look at wine. Yeah, you can.

People are experimenting at northerly latitudes that I'm amazed that in my career I didn't think I would see it. In the United Kingdom, as a measure of its acceptance, English sparkling wine has had the royal imprimatur, the queen serving it at Buckingham Palace. And it was poured at the recent climate change summit in Scotland. Master of Wine Steven Skelton

is bullish on the future. If global warming is intensifying, how worried are you and the other English vintners that it's going to move north beyond your ability to grow? No, I'm not worried at all. No, I mean, the next 40 years are going to be fascinating, I think, because, you know, we're just on the cusp of it being really commercial. Our yield levels are not quite where we want them yet. You know, we would like a little bit more heat. You might get it.

Yeah. But eventually. Who knows? We'll have to start growing oranges and bananas. I mean, it's a serious question. Yeah. Personally, I think we will cope with what's being thrown at us. Some of the winemakers we met are benefiting.

Some are suffering. But all are seeing firsthand the message that climate change is delivering. Wine grapes have often been called the canary in the coal mine. Climatologist Greg Jones says that's been true since the first wine was made in 6000 B.C. in Eastern Europe and then spread to ancient Egypt, Greece, and Persia. Kings celebrated their victories with wine, and the Christian world put it at the heart of the Eucharist. Wine history, Jones says,

is human history. Wine touches society in some pretty powerful ways. It's related to civilizations, it's related to history, it's related to geography, it's related to romanticism, art, gastronomy, biology, chemistry. So there's so many things that are tied to it that it becomes something that we can tell the story of climate change through wine pretty easily. We were nearing last call on the grandest of British institutions, the pub. After enduring for hundreds of years as centers for schmoozing and boozing,

pubs were going the way of morning newspapers, afternoon tea, and the whole idea of empire. A range of factors undercut the kind of neighborhood joint where everyone knows your name. Then came COVID, which kept most British pubs closed for more than a year. But last summer, the UK reopened. And not unlike an over-served patron, the pub story started to stagger and lurch in an unexpected direction. And as John Wertheim first reported in October, maybe it's not quite closing time after all. 1,200 plus years old. Yes. A man walks into a pub. Of course he does. In this case, it's a very old pub. Ye olde fighting cocks in St. Albans outside London. Its landlord or publican is Christo Tofali.

So your pub is one of dozens in this country that claims to be the oldest ever. Yeah, absolutely right. Make your case, make your case. It turns out there's a bit of a misconception as to which one is the oldest and what the oldest pub is. So we're the oldest pub. The first brick was laid in 793 and the oldest inhabited building in Europe. Vikings invaded England in the same year the first brick was laid in 793. I suspect Vikings would like this place. They would love this place.

Before we go further, let's define our terms. We're not talking about mere bars, or for the love of God, sports bars. These are pubs, short for public houses. They exist as much for conviviality as for what's on tap, cold lager, and to the shock of first-timers, warm ale. They've been cornerstones of the culture here for centuries. The writer-slash-comedian Al Murray believes the value proposition goes well beyond beer. It's a community place. It's a communitarian place in a way that sitting in your front room watching television just isn't. What is it about this culture that has such appeal to you? To sound sort of idealistic about it, princes and paupers are equally welcome in here.

And given that Britain is such a class-ridden society, there are very few places where, you know, you stand at the bar and your money's as good as anyone else's. You sound like a pub romantic. I am completely romantic about the idea of pubs. There is something genuinely beautiful about the idea of somewhere where anyone can go at any time and sit in a corner with their own thoughts and a drink, and it's a beautiful notion. You don't go to Turner's Old Star for quiet contemplation.

One of the last of the so-called boozers in London's East End, it's the heartbeat of the proudly working-class community here. Put in a day of work, you work hard, you come in and then you... Yeah, absolutely, you work hard all day, and then you kind of like... It's just like having a mental shower after a hard day's work, just to kind of wind down. It's like a real-life cheers, I guess, you know? They make you feel welcome.

They make you feel welcome. They're family. They're family. Paul and Bernie Strew have run the Old Star for 17 years. They met across the street, got engaged here. They live upstairs. The pub is their living room. The regulars, their oldest friends. When you say regulars, though, these are really regulars.

Oh yeah, everybody. Everybody, everyone from nought to 90 enjoys this. There's a car of people, I suppose, 10, 15 people that come in every day, regardless, winter, summer, whenever. They all come up, have their couple of beers, have a laugh, chew the wag, as they say, and slag everyone off.

Everyone's having a go at each other. I hear you say with a real pride, this is a proper pub. It is. It's my pub pub. That's what we call it, don't we? No, it's a pub pub. We call it a pub pub. For centuries, pubs have been as much salon as saloon, as they've taken a stool and watched history and myth unfold.

In London's Soho, the French House was where Bohemians would rub shoulders with resistance leaders. After Paris fell to the Nazis in 1940, Charles de Gaulle, in exile, is said to have written his famous speech to the French Free Forces here. A little further east on the River Thames, legend has it that the 17th century Judge Jeffries would watch those he sentenced hang as he lunched and sipped ale at the prospect of Whidbey. And then there's the cholera epidemic that gripped London in 1854, killing 550 people in two weeks. A local doctor, John Snow, figured out the problem. Contaminated water from

a well was spreading the disease, and simply removing the handle from the pump effectively ended the epidemic. John Snow wasn't knighted, but he did receive what might be the next highest British honor. Christening a pub after someone is an exception. Many pub names read like drunken mad libs, random adjective plus random noun, often an animal, the ape and apple, the snooty fox, the drunken duck, the black dog. For Pete Brown, Britain's leading writer on beer and pubs, these names offer a clue to every establishment's story. What's going on here?

It's become one of the quirky aspects of the British pub, but it starts off in a very practical way, which is that most of the population who went to pubs until recently were illiterate. So you couldn't put a name sign up. You had to have a pictorial sign. So you'd pick a picture of something that had some resonance

with people. But then some of the ones that you just mentioned, I think it's kind of the pub self-satirizing itself. And it's not just pub names that veer toward the colourful and eccentric. Just behind London's Law Court and then behind the bar, you'll

find the owner, chef and star performer of the Seven Stars pub, the talented Mrs. Roxy Beaujolais. Your husband is American. Yes. How do you explain what you do to his family? Well, when I was first introduced to them about 30 years ago, his mother asked me what I did. And I said, I'm a publican. She said, what? And my husband dove in and said, no, no, no, no, no, mama, not a Republican, a public, a tavern keeper.

But what is it about this job that clearly feeds something in you? I'm good at it, darling. I'm good at it. You know, I cook. You know, I have a passing interest in the product that I sell myself. You know, I love it. For the last 25 years, comedian Al Murray has loved playing the figure behind the bar. His alter ego on stages, a head-shaved, over-opinionated blowhard he calls the pub landlord. We're sensible people in this country, aren't we? Down to earth people. Yeah, we never put a man on the moon. No, the moon was never going to be part of the British Empire, was it, by chance?

No, there's no one to give it back to once we're done with it, is there? So what is it about that archetype? He's a know-all who knows nothing. It's a guy who has power but no authority. It's a guy who is writing intellectual checks he can't possibly cash. Well, my wide-eyed... It's the whole swirl of what happens in a pub.

The publican is the conduit, the confessor, the sort of, you know, high priest in a space like this. So all goes through him. It's all good fun, but as his character suggests, pub culture is, if not eroding, undergoing considerable change. For generations, the number of British pubs has been declining, from 65,000 to fewer than 50,000 in the last 25 years. The causes of death are many. High beer duty, a smoking ban, cheap supermarket lager, people drinking less.

Perhaps the biggest culprits? Venture capitalists and developers more interested in a pub's real estate than what's on tap. And then in March 2020 came the hammer blow, COVID-19. What was it like when this closed for the first time? Soul-destroying, I mean, in business terms, lethal. I still haven't got any words for it, John. We have a passion to open the door every single day. This wasn't just change the sign on the door. This sounds almost existential. It's terminal for a lot of pubs.

Even in the worst of times, the Napoleonic Wars, the Spanish Flu, pubs did not close. Despite the bombings and the Blitz, Churchill insisted that pubs remain open. How bad can things be if we can still pull a pint? But this is just a little story to show that the spirit of the pubs is excellent. The house is bummed. They carry on outside. The lockdown gave Britain a glimpse of a future without pubs. For months, the cobbled streets where Dickens once walked, silent. The taverns where Chaucer or Shakespeare might have drunk, empty.

Millions of barrels of beer literally down the drain. What does this country stand to lose if pubs diminish? Part of its identity, we celebrate our nationality in a very quiet way, in a very modest way. And the pub is a perfect example of that. We're proud of the pub. And if it was taken away from us, I think we'd lose something of what defines us as a nation. It's not flag-waving jingoism, but coming in here is sort of an act of patriotism, you're saying.

It's just coming in and just going, yeah, I'll have another pint. Thank you. Coming out of lockdown, the pint-wielding patriots believed, more than ever, that the pub is an institution worth saving. Saving the traditional pub, is that nostalgia for a Britain that may no longer exist? Oh, there are so many Britons that may no longer exist, but the one that's worth saving is the pub, surely. I mean, you know, we don't need a navy anymore, do we? We need pubs. In a changing Britain, nostalgia can reside at the bottom of a glass. In the oh-so-English village of Aldworth in Berkshire, you'll find just a cricket green, a church, a few houses, and a pub resistant to time. The Bell Inn has been in the family of Heather McCauley for 200 years. She was born in the pub and now, at age 85, runs it with her son Hugh.

And would you like fresh onion and tomato on the side as well? How many generations in these 200 years? We go, there's James and Hugh and Thomas and Ronald, and then me, five, I suppose. We've talked to some pub owners who've said they felt this pressure to evolve and they're trying gourmet food and DJs and technology. Here? No. We are plain, simple, that's how we survive,

that's how we're going to survive. I don't think we'll ever be putting TVs in here somehow. Oh, no, no. No. Well, I don't even have a mobile phone. Pubs like the Bellins and the Old Stars have done what they've always done, served their communities. But where does the rest of the country fit in?

Nigerian-born Clement Ogbenaya is proud owner of the Prince of Peckham in South London. He has taken the magic of the pub and adapted it to multicultural 21st century Britain. You hear the word pub 20 years ago, what are you thinking? I'm thinking I'm not going there. So play that out for me. You walk into a conventional pub and what happens? Think of Clint Eastwood in a western movie. It's like everyone looks at the door, swinging. Who's that guy? That's how I felt in some pubs I walked in. Piano stops playing.

Absolutely, absolutely. Four years ago, Clement bought up a neighborhood joint destined to be turned into an apartment block or a mini market. Pubs play a massive part in representing the communities, representing the underrepresented, the marginalized, and giving them a space, giving them somewhere they can actually be.

They can congregate. They can share ideas. When kids today hear the word pub, what do you want them to think? I want them to think that's a space for me. That's a space where I can be. That's a space where I can celebrate. That's a space where I can hang out, I can laugh, I can mourn.

That's what you're going for when you open this place. Yeah, I just love seeing the melting pot that is London reflected in this pub. Beer and good cheer won't save them all. We had to pour one out for one of the oldest pubs in the country, Ye Olde Fighting Cox. They had to call one out for one of the oldest pubs in the country, ye olde fighting cocks. They had to call closing time last weekend, another financial COVID casualty. But the Prince of Peckham may have seized on a way out. Cater to an evolving and ever-changing Britain.

Those pints, after all, aren't going to drink themselves. I'm Leslie Stahl. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back next week with a brand new edition of 60 Minutes.