Brut Oak Vintage (Calvados)
Dame Jeanne in Brasschaat, Antwerp, Belgium 🇧🇪
Bière de Champagne / Bière Brut Regular|
Score
6.67
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Dame Jeanne aged/aging on oak by use of an OAK MASTER closure, which contains a 4 gram rod of American medium toasted oak, manufactured from high quality tonnellerie staves. The oak is infused with high quality liquor chosen from the best distilleries
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6.6/10
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Appearance 6
Aroma 7
Flavor 7
Texture 6
Overall 6.5
Apparently already the third one in a series of 'oak aged' versions of Dame Jeanne, the champagne beer from the larger Antwerp region, preceded by a bourbon version and a cognac version (of which the latter isn't even on this site yet). As with the previous two versions, the cork is equipped with a wooden rod, coming from a barrel and drenched in calvados, if I understand correctly; apparently this 'groundbreaking' technique was developed especially for this series and indeed I never saw anything even remotely similar before. Bottom line, however, is that this is an admittedly ingenious shortcut, trying to add woodiness while avoiding the use of an actual wooden barrel. From a 75 cl bottle packed in a brown paper bag (quite ironically if you are familiar with the idea) with an opening in it to show the front label, and with a hangtag giving only limited explanation. Opens with a bang but no gushing. Towering, egg-white, foamy head, shrinking to a ragged, irregular ring of mousse with tight cobweb-like lacing, slowly breaking in the middle; misty yellow-golden blonde robe with apricot tinge and - as befits a 'champagne beer' - columns of fierce champagne-like sparkling rushing upwards from the bottom of the glass. Aroma of indeed a lot of strongly vanilla-scenting wet oak wood (especially in the beginning, so near the top of the bottle, unsurprisingly), indeed calvados, ripe banana, melting butter, fried apples, sweet cider, minerals, pear jam, lychee wine, cava, freshly cut sweet basil leaves, chewing gum, dry straw, camomile tea, old powdery medicine, faint hints of tea, dust and grass. Sweet onset, very pronounced 'bubblegummy' banana ester (banana candy-ish almost) with sweet apple, pear and white grape notes, light sourish undertone enhanced by this fizzy, minerally carbonation - which, lively as it is, fizzes away on the tongue without painfully stinging it; supple, lean body (actually feeling lighter than its ABV - probably due to that lively carbonation), slick cereally and sweet-bready maltiness with minerally and slightly buttery side effects continuing well into a medium long finish, adding the tannins from the wood in a slightly astringent manner, that 'old crumbled medicine' effect, the 'powdery' bready-yeasty effect from the champagne yeast (including a vaguely champagne-ish flavour note), a very floral hop character (camomile, buttercup), an indeed clearly apple-ish calvados colour and warming, soothing alcohol, calvados-like but 'jenever'-like as well, while that banana ester keeps lingering. That old medicine-like effect, bitter and a bit 'chemical', is a rather off-putting aspect to me, but the calvados and the wood are very prominent indeed so apparently this cork-with-wooden-rod thing does what it was intended to do - albeit in a somewhat crude and overly strong manner. Aiming for refinement in a not so refined way - but admittedly quite bold and original, which deserves an extra point in my book. I am, however, not convinced that I should go after the two first versions now - as I argued before about this brand, the basic beer itself needs some finetuning as well.
Tried
from Bottle
on 21 Feb 2020
at 23:04