Bottle at Pre-Borefts tasting. Very dark brown with huge beige head. Oak indeed, caramel, paper, fresh twigs, some toffee, light Brett. Under medium sweet, sour and bitter. Medium bodied with fizzy carbonation.

Bottle at the pre-Borefts tasting, Den Haag, 2016. Poured a clear dark brown with a big frothy off white head. The aroma is roasty, woody hop. The flavour is moderate bitter with a floral medial hop, light fruit, light alcohol palate. Medium bodied with average carbonation.

Bottle shared at the pre Borefts tasting. Thin off white head. Clear amber pour. Light oak notes.

Sampled @ Pre-Borefts-Tasting 2016. Gushing! Trübes orange braunes Bier mit einer mittelgroßen beigen Schaumkrone. Geruch nach roten Früchten, leicht säuerlich, Schokolade. Geschmack nach roten Beeren, Karamell, minimal säuerlich.

Bottle at pre borefts 2016 tasting.. Dark brown.. Massive tan head.. Soft dry spice chocolate roast malts nose.. Dark roast. Mlight tart roast.. Light Berries

750 ml. bottle from Delhaize. I am happy that i read Alengrin (excellent as usual review) before opening this one. The cork just flew away and hit the ceiling here before I got a chance to do anything, some gushing eschewed. This beer is just not safe, someone could get hurt. Dark brown, touch black and a patchy dark brown head once it settles down. Nose is massive sour red wine, very vinous, oud bruin, low vinegar wine, some Oud Bruin glue, low tobacco in the back, very sour & rather tart. Smell is promising, taste is massive mess, burned plastic, burned malts mixed with paint thinner, vinegar red wine, burned rubber, fizzy, spoiled sour cherry, burned plastic, old chocolate with the white stuff, fizzy vinegar. Fizzy, thin, harsh burned plastic & white grain alcohol. Really messy rubbish, considering how bad the base beer was, I am not sure what I expected here. Either way this one is an expensive joke at my expense in my opinion.

The last of Ben Vinken’s series of luxuriously presented specialty beers for Delhaize, added in late 2015 and nothing more than the Strong Dark aged on (Belgian) red wine barrels (Pinot Noir). Strange no one has rated this one before, as all the other beers in these two series were already present on this site... For two years in a row (2014 and 2015), self-proclaimed ’beer sommelier’ (or Belgian beer chauvinist) Ben Vinken has treated the Delhaize customer to a specially designed beer for every season but since I haven’t seen a new one pop up so far in this year, I guess the inspiration for making different styles each time has prematurely halted and we will not have a third series this year. Anyway: the 75 cl bottle with hangtag opens with a loud bang followed by some slow gushing, but nothing dramatic; obviously I did not follow Vinken’s advice to serve this ice cold like champagne and served it at cellar temperature, which is clearly a lot more fit for a barrel-aged ’massieve ale’. Thick and frothy, ’papery’ lacing but quite regularly shaped, pale yellowish beige and remarkably ’closed’ head over a dark, hazy chestnut beer with red wine-coloured hue. Aroma is, like many brown beers aged on red wine barrels, somewhat ’oud bruin’-like, with hints of indeed a full-bodied dry red wine, oaky tannins (furniture!), bitter chocolate, candied fig, blueberry, subtle coriander seed, burnt cane sugar, dried banana, orange peel, elderberry, forest floor, cloves, quite some young ’jenever’-like alcohol, soap, very faint FFF (freshly fermented farmland - I mean this as a euphemism for manure) but not disturbing, and a hint of varnish-like solvents - in all, interesting and quite attractive, though a bit ’wild’. Very spritzy onset, overcarbonated to a high extent with a rough, cava-like effect on the tongue, numbing at first but significantly (and luckily) calming down after a while, when pleasant sweetish and sourish fruit flavors begin to intermingle, with impressions of dry banana, fig, blackberry, blueberry and passion fruit. These fruity esters guide the palate to a deeply malty middle phase, lightly caramelly with a sweetish main character but, much more so, very nutty and deeply toasted, with quite sharply bittering edges. Meanwhile, a deep, soft vinous sourishness builds up, with an increasingly drying effect, further enhanced by quite a lot of drying, furniture-like oak in the end, yielding some subtle vanilla-like tannins and red wine aromas retronasally pairing well with the beer’s main malt and ester character; ends quite satisfactory, with ongoing maltiness and woodiness supported by earthy, gently bittering and well-dosed hops and a heart-warming glow of brandy-like alcohol, only showing up after swallowing and not becoming wry or astringent. The remainders of the wine are palpable all the way at the back, when indeed a warm red wine-like flavor sticks to the root of the tongue. A few minor comments aside, primarily the coarse, exaggerated carbonation in the beginning, I must admit that this is a fine beer, and by far the best of the two series. The aging on Genoels-Elderen barrels (a Belgian red wine) is clearly intended to lend it an air of terroir - or old school (and surpassed) Belgian beer chauvinism if you will, but as in similar projects by other breweries, has resulted in a relatively complex beer with Flemish red-like properties and a vinous, elegant character, in which the soft astringency of the wine and the ’fluffy’ sweetness of the beer are acting out an interesting play. All things considered, Ben Vinken does have the merit to have drawn attention to Belgian beer culture in a time when not many people cared about ’craft beer’ and linked this rich tapestry of Belgian beer flavors to gastronomy, but then commercial considerations got the better of him it seems, supporting the established family brewers in mysterious ways we will never know the ins and outs of. Regardless of his approach, which in my view is clearly obsolete in this day and age, I must say this one has been executed properly, and I will recommend it above the seven other Ben’s beers he has now promoted through the Delhaize supermarkets. I hate to admit it, but this one is at a relatively high level. It remains completely beyond me why an experienced ’beer connaisseur’ like Ben advises serving this (and his other offerings) ice cold like champagne, but anyway. Interestingly, the ratings that followed mine apparently progressively go downhill: I was originally considering to buy another bottle of this to see how well it ages, but I have the impression they harbor some kind of infection which becomes ever more clear as time passes by - older bottles are still available at some Delhaize supermarkets (as of September 2016) but with this in mind, I think I’ll refrain from buying a second one...