This season, anyone knocking back a bottle of Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome beer will do so under the benevolent gaze of Joe Gilmartin. The owner of Pike Place tavern White Horse Trading Co. was selected by the British brewery to grace the label of its annual wintertime seasonal release. As Gilmartin recently explained to Seattle Weekly’s Julien Perry, the label is intended as a salute to barkeeps around the world. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s reportedly the single largest seller of Samuel Smith beer this side of the pond.

“I didn’t know I was coming,” recounts Gilmartin. “They didn’t ask or anything they just kind of surprised me.” The image of him on the label is a pointillism portrait drawn by an Issaquah-based artist. Or, as Gilmartin describes it “a generic-looking white bartender.”

Gilmartin’s British-inspired tavern (and used bookstore!) sells a hefty array of Samuel Smith beers, including the hard-to-find Yorkshire Stingo, released once a year. So it should come as no surprise that he has high praise for Samuel Smith products, which he has been pouring for the past 17 years at White Horse and pubs he owned previously in California. He describes the 250-year-old North Yorkshire brewery as “one of the last of the old school hands-on places in that region,” still making barrels by hand and delivering beer in horse drawn carts in some areas. Say Gilmartin, “It’s Old World that simply won’t quit.”

The Winter Welcome ale bearing Gilmartin’s image is on sale in nine different countries, and certain bars, markets and beer stores around the region.