Sushi^^, great to hear your view. the subject itself is incidental, but its awesome to read the views of someone who really knows their shit in a thread, rather than drawing on received wisdom or mouthing off with only vague knowledge.
i think the beer arguement can be applied to almost anything- no one country is the best at everything. for example, with skiers like jon, candide and lolo around it would be erroneous to say "America has the best newschoolers". agreed, many but not all of the top guys are from the us.
similarly for big mtn: the us has great athletes like davenport, seth and mcconkey. but thats not to say that the us is the best- kaj zachrisson, seb michaud, manu gaidet, phil meier prove this.
in any case, anal questions like "who's country is best?" simply shouldn't be applied to chilled out past times like skiing and beer...