ONE of the most enjoyable beers I’ve ever had was while on a footballing trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina three years ago.

My mates and I just couldn’t get enough of it – partly because it was the perfect antidote to the sweltering heat and partly because it was ridiculously cheap.

It was called Sarajevsko, a local brew, but we didn’t really know that at the time because we relied, instead, on the one word of Bosnian we had between the three of us: pivo.

There, as in much of Eastern Europe, the word is one of the key fundamentals, meaning, as you may have guessed, beer. So, accompanied by the appropriate number of fingers, simply saying “pivo” helped us wile away a pleasant few hours soaking up the Balkan sunshine ahead of the big match.

Some 1,100 miles west, tucked away in the historic heart of York, the word is also gaining importance. Pivo Café Bar, which opened just over two years ago in Patrick Pool, has fast become one of the York’s prized pubs, offering a diversity and quantity of beers virtually unrivalled in the city.

The bar, in a former travel agency, boasts 17 draft beers and about 75 bottled ones from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australasia and Africa. Many of the bottles are not cheap, but the choice is nothing short of phenomenal.

I was in there last week and enjoyed a bottle of Quilmes, an enjoyably light 4.9 per cent ABV pilsner from Argentina. I was pondering, anyway, whether it merited mention in this week’s column, but my mind was made up by events earlier this week, when – as reported in The Press yesterday – the bar scooped first prize in the “beer range” category of The Publican Food And Drink Awards 2009.

So, back I headed with a colleague for a more thorough examination.

Between us, we sampled four more: Crocodile from Sweden (5.2 per cent ABV); Baadog from Mongolia (4.8 per cent); Vedett from Belgium (5.2 per cent) and its fellow Belgian offering Piraat, which came in at a formidable 10.5 per cent.

The Crocodile was my favourite of the four, a really crisp, refreshing lager that would have gone down even better in hotter times than November. The Baadog was the most distinctive, with a pleasant autumnal maltiness. The Vedett was a classic Belgian, very pleasant but largely unremarkable, while the Piraat was as potent as one would expect, while still retaining a very agreeable sweet and spicy flavour.

Pivo itself is a real charm of a building, with its timber beams and comfortable seating areas creating an idiosyncratic ambience that hovers somewhere between ye olde Yorke and the best that mainland Europe has to offer.

For those who want something to soak up the beer – and with 10.5 per cent offerings, you may well – there is usually a decent selection of sandwiches in the downstairs bar.

• REGULARS at one of York’s newest bars are being rewarded for their custom. The Scene in Micklegate has launched a loyalty reward card. When a customer has collected five stamps, they will receive a free CD.