Even greatness is no guarantee of survival.

English brewery O'Hanlon's last week announced it would no longer be brewing Thomas Hardy's Ale, a rich, vintage-dated barley wine widely regarded by beer aficionados as a world classic. While another brewery could decide to buy the rights, the beer's future is up in the air – those bottles of 2008 on LCBO shelves could well be a collector's item.

The decision to stop brewing one of the world's greatest beers was a painful one, but became necessary because of the time and money it took to produce, said O'Hanlon's sales manager Liz O'Hanlon.

"It really wasn't an easy decision. But in the end, it just wasn't worth it," said O'Hanlon.

Since 2003, O'Hanlon's had been brewing Thomas Hardy's under license for U.S. importer George Saxon, who had bought the rights to the beer from original brewer Eldridge Pope. Thomas Hardy was created by Pope in 1968 as a tribute to the English author and continued production until 1999, when the company got out of the brewing business. Saxon eventually bought the rights and hired O'Hanlon's to brew it to the original recipe.

While sales were decent for what was an expensive, niche product, O'Hanlon said they weren't good enough to justify the difficulties of producing, packaging and selling the beer.

"Our regular beers take about two weeks to brew. With the Thomas Hardy, we'd start brewing in January and it was September before we could start bottling it," said O'Hanlon. With an alcohol percentage that sometimes topped 12 per cent, more raw materials were also needed than for any other O'Hanlon's beer.

Even the packaging wasn't easy. Each bottle has a gold foil top and is individually numbered; there's also a gold medallion hung from each bottle.

"We had to hang those medallions by hand," said O'Hanlon.

With sales of its other brands growing quickly, O'Hanlon said the brewery needed more production capacity; the quickest, cheapest way to get it was by pulling the plug on Thomas Hardy.

While Saxon is trying to find another English brewery to take on Thomas Hardy, O'Hanlon isn't sure that's going to happen any time soon.

"I wish him luck, but it's really not going to be easy for him," said O'Hanlon.

Saxon had no comment on the search, or O'Hanlon's decision.

A small brewery would face the same obstacles as O'Hanlon's, while a large one would need to push production volumes far past what there's a demand for, O'Hanlon suggested.

Asked if they'd be interested in brewing Thomas Hardy's, two English breweries with experience saving historic beers said yes, but with major qualifications.

"For various technical and logistical reasons we need to be considering at least 10,000 hectolitres a year," said Richard Westwood, production director at Marston's, which has two beers in its product line made by historic methods no longer used by most brewers.

Ten thousand hectolitres translates into a million litres a year, or roughly 40 times what O'Hanlon's produced.

At London's Fuller's brewery, which took over the tricky production of Gale's Prize Old Ale from its original brewer in 2005, brewing director John Keeling also expressed an interest in making Thomas Hardy's.

"It's something I'd consider taking a look at, but only if we owned the brand. We wouldn't want to put all that effort into something if it wasn't even our brand," said Keeling.