This beer continues the conceptual series that began with MMXX-MMXXI Ceasing-to-Be, MMXXI Coming-to-Be, and MMXXIII-MMXXIV True-Nature. An exploration of coferments of grapes and red fruits.

This is the first part of two beers utilizing 2024 harvest French Creek red grape varietals, we were lucky that season to get some really carefully farmed Syrah and Mourvedre from Damon. I was hoping to extract some of the more strawberry/plum type characters from these grapes, so processed them like you might for rosé. The blends with beer were put into barrel and aged over-vintage to soften them up, and in 2025 we racked those beers onto organic Balaton cherries from the old Weddle Farm in July, and then subsequently onto late harvest triple crown blackberries from Sidhu in August. After this third fruit refermentation we allowed the beer to rest in tank and bottled it late the following winter, early 2026.

It's hard for us to shake the memory of the blackberry/cherry combination of the Bottleworks 20th anniversary beer we made in 2018 (and released in 2019). I've avoided going back to that out of respect to that beer, but after a long retirement we have a new/better source of my favorite blackberry varietal and this riff seemed, while similar, different enough that it wold be fun to make. I'm very glad we decided to do that as this beer is wonderful and the balance of fruit in it is absolutely wild.

Bottling date: 02/05/2026
ABV: 6.85% ABV
Conditioned with: Organic cane sugar.
Cellar: Still on its ascent. Of all the beers in this release this is the one which I think will most benefit from additional (warm) aging in bottle. It's drinking nicely right now but I think it'll really start to hit its stride late summer/fall '26, and probably not peak until spring 2027.