Just to steer this somewhere back towards beer while keeping the theme of the conversation, when I first moved to Scotland in 1992, there were a mere eight breweries in the whole country. One of these (Broughton) looked like it was on its last legs. Another, Scottish and Newcastle, was one of the former "big six" and produced nothing worth drinking.
These days, however, Scotland is teeming with breweries. I couldn't tell you exactly how many, but we must have at least sixty independent breweries here now. You may well ask why this should be. Well, for one thing, I think it's a general trend in the UK. Another factor is the very popular brewing course at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. A good many of the newer brewers are graduates of this course.