Yukon recording artist Matthew Lien has been recruited by Taiwan's largest brewery to be the new celebrity face of Gold Medal King, the latest brand of Taiwan Beer manufactured by the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp.

Promoting beer is a new direction for the eco-musician, who is better known for his cultural and environmental efforts.

'I had no idea that I was on Taiwan Beer's radar,' he said in a statement released Sunday by Whispering Willows Records.

'But it certainly suits me. I've probably consumed enough Taiwan Beer over the years to be a shareholder in the company. I have no problem endorsing this product, as it really is a good product.'

TTL's Taiwan Beer has won numerous international awards (hence the new product's title), and continues to gain respect around the world. While the original recipe was based on a brew from Berlin, Germany, Taiwan Beer has developed a distinctive local flavour aided in part by the inclusion of rice in the brewing ingredients.

While this is the first time TTL has used a foreign face to advertise its products, Lien is the second musician to popularize Taiwan Beer.

Last year, TTL enlisted Taiwan's best-known rock-and-roller to create a more aggressive advertising campaign. Those campaigns helped TTL to increase its 74-per-cent share of the beer market in 2002 to the current 80 per cent of the country's $1 billion US-a-year beer market.

Lien's endorsement will launch a new campaign largely intended to defend TTL's market share from its closest rival, Heineken, which is the second-best selling beer in Taiwan and accounts for eight per cent of the market.

Print ads and billboards will feature Lien's image in major cities around the country. The new TV commercials are set to begin airing next month and are radically different from the previous noisy rock 'n' roll beer ads.

The 15, 20, and 30 second TV advertisements feature Lien as he records the sounds of nature in Taiwan's lush rain forests. While recording, he befriends a group of river tracers and after jumping from the top of a waterfall and enjoying a brisk swim, Lien and his new friends enjoy a glass of Taiwan Beer together.

TTL chairman Ray Dawn feels it has made the right choice in selecting Lien for the new campaign.

'It's a new brand of beer and we wanted to take a different approach,' he said. 'We wanted to show how fresh the beer is and how natural the ingredients are.

'But more importantly, we wanted to use an international image to show how Taiwan Beer is accepted by people everywhere.'

According to figures made available from TTL, an average of 475 million litres of beer are consumed in Taiwan every year, which breaks down to roughly 21l litres annually for each of Taiwan's 23 million citizens.

It remains to be seen as to whether Lien's image will boost these percentages even higher.

'If everyone does their patriotic duty and adheres to this product, then you never know,' quipped Lien.

'Maybe Taiwan could drink its way to independence.'