Wilde Bosbessen
(has 4 batches)

Bottle from the brewery. Pours dark red/pink colour, almost no head. Very fruity nose, lots of sweet blueberries, also barnyard, manure, lemon. Taste is tart and fruity with funky brett notes. Rather tart, light bitterness. Low, almost no carbonation. Very interesting.

Bottle at Grana Padano 2.0 - pours orangeish with white head - nose and taste of red currant, funk, oak and touch of circus peanuts (especially in nose) - medium body

New experiment by De Cam, lambic made with (whole) blueberries from the Ardennes, launched at this year’s Toer De Geuze along with a redcurrant variant. From a 75 cl bottle with cork and muselet. Loose, bubbly, thin head, initially consisting of large bubbles but settling into a thin, denser, moussy, very pale off-lilac-tinged head leaving some ’dotty’ lacing initially but in the end completely gone; ruby-tinged purplish burgundy robe, a tad more brownish and purple than an ’oude kriek’ would look, clear at the edges but hazy in its ’soul’ even with careful pouring, some strings of fine sparkling around the edges sustain the thin rim-shaped head. Aroma of blueberry crumble without the sugar, both fresh (sour and mildly spicy) and stewed blueberries, even stewed blue plums, unsugared homemade ’forest fruit’ jam, elderberry juice of the kind my grandmother used to turn into a liquor, soggy old bread, some soaking wet wood (or blueberry seeds?), Roosvicee or even rosehip tea somewhere, overripe purple gooseberries, fermenting hay, damp tree leaves, red wine vinegar, hint of old urine, spoiled rhubarb compote, mud, moist jute bags, fried tomato concentrate. Quite intense fruitiness in the onset, lots of lambic esteriness with notes of unripe, wry plum, gooseberry and sour blackberries, soaked in a considerable amount of blueberry juice and mashed blueberries, adding a vague sweetish core with thin spicy edges, almost blueberry jam-like but unsugared, with this background sweetishness coming merely from the fructose naturally present in the berries; the wryness, palpable from the start, may derive partially from tannic components in the seeds of the same berries and matches well with the blueberry ’flesh’ sweetness and the lambic esteriness and sourness - the latter remaining fairly mild here, certainly to De Cam standards, with mostly a softly but thoroughly drying, lactic sourness and only a wafer-thin ’veil’ of vinegary acidity faintly adding a bit more ’punch’ in the onset. Carbonation remains close to absent, though there is some very light background spritziness, as in a bottled unblended lambic (think De Cam Oude Lambiek, for instance). Soft breadiness below the continuous blueberry fruit and lactic tartness, very bready in fact, especially near the end as some more sediment comes in - the combination of which with the big wave of blueberry flavor again reminds a lot of blueberry crumble. This very outspoken breadiness softens the finish a bit, but nothing sweet ever happens: if anything, the finish turns very dry, due to ongoing lactic tartness and blueberry fruit acidity, but also due to late ’wet wood’ flavors, even more tannins from the blueberry skins and seeds (eventually resulting in a very noticeable, lingering astringency), and an vague but effective, very earthy ’old’ hop bitter note tucked away at the back. The tartness, tannins (probably more from the fruit than from the wood) but also this juicy, soft, ’moelleux’ blueberry jam or blueberry crumble factor linger in the throat long after swallowing, with even a very vague hint of warming alcohol; retronasally, I get even the natural spiciness of the fruit, ethereally rising up in the very end, yet very subtly so. All these different components, some remaining very subtle, make for an ending more complex than it seems at first sight. I noticed Karel Goddeau, the blender, strongly recommending to cellar this one for a year, but curiosity got the better of me and I must say I do not regret it: I do not recall having had any other blueberry lambic before and considering how lambic makes use of all kinds of indigenous (or ’northern European’) kinds of fruit, it seems even a bit strange that apart from Cantillon’s commissioned Blabaer (which I am still on the lookout for), this has not been done by the traditional lambic and geuze producers before, at least not in the modern era, as far as I know. A shame really, because the almost ’fluffy’ softness of the fruit, its sweetish sourness with a spicy note to it and the tannin-rich skins and seeds blend in very well with the natural properties of lambic. This is rich, generous and deliciously bready, liquid blueberry crumble as it were, but with the sweetness replaced by dryness and typical lambic astringency and complexity. For as far as I am concerned, this new blueberry lambic is perfectly ready to drink like this, though it would indeed be interesting to see how it evolves further over time. I read weirder things about that redcurrant variant so just to be safe, I’ll keep that one in the cellar for many more months, though it too fascinates me hugely. As for this one: I do hope it will be integrated in De Cam’s regular assortment, this really deserves more publicity.