Flaska från Beergium. Gyllengul, aningen disig vätska utan skum. Piggt syrlig doft med aningen funk, citrus, plommon, strå. Knivvass syra som skickar signaler från tungan ändå ned i ryggslutet. De Cams syrlighet är på gränsen, men de sötsyrliga plommon funkar riktigt bra ihop. Gott

No head over a fully hazy dirty ochre beer, fully yeast/fruitladen, with no visible carbonation. Fruity, indeed plums as mirabelle or Reine Claude, and perfumey. Pastry fruitfilling. Mirabelles, lactic acid, lemon, but missing the classic barnyard/horseblanket. The fruit has the domination. Sweetish. Finish has an outspoken aroma of nutmeg. Acidthinning, low carbonation, fruitslick. More fruitsour than a real blended fruitlambic. Far from bad, naturally, but not traditionally great.

One of two new fruit lambics by De Cam (the other with a combination of raspberry and redcurrant), made with cherry plums ('mirabelle'), a fruit I fondly remember from childhood and my late grandmother's orchard. Apparently comes in two different labels, a 'classic' one stating the name as "Mirabel-Lambiek" and a black one with glossy letters stating the name as simply "Mirabellen" - I suspect De Cam is working on a makeover of their labels and this one falls right into the transition period. Off-white, loosely knit, thin and open, irregularly bubbly ring quickly thinning but remaining present for a while (before eventually dissolving completely); cloudy orangey peach blonde robe with beige-ish edges. Aroma of indeed cherry plums but in an 'overripe' or even dried kind of way, oxidized plum wine and oxidized sweet sherry, old apple peel, wet cardboard even, homemade pear juice and even wine must made by some amateur in his kitchen with inadequate equipment, rainwater, cold camomile tea, old lemon zest, vaguer hints of wet cigarette tobacco and other phenolic effects, stewed rhubarb, faint wet wood in the background. Very fruity in the mouth, packed to the brim with sweet ripe cherry plum juice and flesh, fructose of juicy, almost overripe stonefruit but also a light lime-like sourness at the edges bringing some balance, close to flat carbonation, supple mouthfeel; soft bready malt core dried by lactic tartness with even a slight lemony edge, but muffled by all that ripe plum sweetness. Slight tannic effects of the plum peel and wet wood appear in the finish, along with a late but important 'shadow' of old hop bitterishness - but still the fleshiness of nearly overripe cherry plums in autumn dominates, so that the overall result feels like drinking homemade plum juice. The oxidation from the nose returns retronasally - and clearly so, as in drinking a sweet top-fermented beer that has passed it "best before" date by years, adding a 'rusty' effect to the whole. Interesting idea executed in a rather bizarre way: the lambic's complex features as well as its play of acids is muffled by a rather monotonous tone of sweet ripe cherry plum, and the beer is weirdly oxidized in spite of having been made relatively recently - so somewhere in the production process, it must have seen too much oxygen. Too bad, I love De Cam's passionate, authentic, crafty, no-nonsense, purist and uncompromizing approach to lambic production and some of the things Karel Goddeau has done in recent years were stunning, but this one to me is an experiment that turned out rather unsuccessful. Lacking in complexity, oxidized in a way that it should not, perhaps a tad too 'overripe fruit'-like: I am very curious what others will think of this one... Surely every batch - if it is to be continued - will be different and I will absolutely re-rate this one whenever the next batch arrives.