Bottle shared at home. Bright clear dark amber with no head. Bright funk, dead leaves, soft caramel, dank cellar notes, a bit of sweet grapes too 🍇, dried apricot, mineral notes, gooseberries, elderberries, soft oak. Just medium sour, light sweet and bitter. Solid medium bodied with soft spritzy carbonation. Pretty damn nice, even though I don’t get much grape here.

Bottle in Ye Olde Meldrum. It pours lightly hazy rose with a fluffy white head. The aroma is sweet - sour, juicy, tart, bright grape character, jammy, Welch's grape juice, sour candy, funky, musty, dirty, light manure and sherbet. The taste is crisp, dry, tart, bright, juicy black grape, sherbet, sour candy, musty, funky, brett, sour candy, good mouth pucker, light acidity, woo and a touch of oiliness. Medium body and fine carbonation. Bright, fruity, puckering and funky. Tastee.

One of the three newest lambics in this series, developed by a Japanese entrepreneur and making use of De Troch lambic; the two others are with Japanese strawberries and Japanese roses, this one uses Japanese grapes. From a 37.5 cl bottle with cork and with the typical, almost origami-inspired soft paper decoration on top, in this case purple in colour – quite an attractive packing method if you ask me. Snow white, moussy, barely lacing, quickly opening head fizzing away like the head on a glass of champagne into a thin open ring, over a lightly hazy, beautifully rosé champagne-coloured beer with warm orange glow, misty with sediment. Unusual but immediately lambic-y aroma of (strong) grape seed oil, old raisins, redcurrant, unripe sour grapes and grape peel, green raspberry bush leaves, dusty attic, old books, artisanal cider, dry hay, crackers, cava. Sharp fruit acidity in the mouth, like immature sour grapes with little to no fructose sweetness inside, wry effects of grape peel and unripe stonefruit as well as more crisp, lemony lambic sourness; fizzy, cava-like effervescence. Bready, cracker-like malt underbuilt dried by the lambic and fruit sourness, green berries and again sour grapes, hint of crabapple, turning more and more wry in the end, with woody effects being overshadowed by a very outspoken, astringent, bitter grape seed flavour, as if you eat a grape and accidentally bite on a seed – the same flavour, reminiscent of grapeseed oil as well, blends with the lambic’s natural sourness and wryness, establishing a complex, wry, earthy, dry but very appetizing finish. Not the most accessible lambic in general, a bit weird really, but that goes for all these OWA lambics I had so far (I have one more to go now) and in any case interesting; the girlfriend liked it a lot and who am I to disagree… Different, but very interesting and appetizing and for me more a success in terms of flavour refinement than the strawberry version I had weeks ago.