Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 9 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 10 | Overall - 8.5

Now here is an unusual and surprising offering from De Leite, the brewery that quietly started with old school Belgian ales back in 2008 but gained more notoriety in the craft beer world when they started producing sour ales in 2012 (Cuvée Mam’Zelle): apparently they kept a small quantity – less than 160 l apparently – aside of one of their first commercial batches, the dubbel Bon Homme (or something unnamed that comes very close to it), only to let it age for thirteen years in 75 cl bottles. This deliberately aged batch was brewed in 2008, before De Leite started venturing into sour ale territory, and was only released this year, in a wooden luxury box containing two glasses as well. Produces an off-white, medium sized, moussy, slowly opening head on a ruddy mahogany brown beer with misty amber hue. Delicate, yet fascinating bouquet of wrinkled oxidized red apple slices, very old dusty walnuts from grandmother’s cellar, passionfruit, old dry sherry, brown bread, dust, ‘kramiek’, sirop de Liège without the sugar, dried dates, medlar, wood glue, some vague balsamic vinegar in the distance. Sweetish onset, old raisins and dried figs, hints of medlar and pear, soft carbonation with a very soft, bit ‘fluffy’, somewhat vinous mouthfeel; brown-bready and dry-caramelly maltiness, delicate spicy notes of clove and gingerbread, hint of wood glue, soft herbal hop bitterishness for balance and even walnutty malt bitterness in the end; hints of old dry sherry and old red wine unveil the beer’s impressive age, but otherwise it is still intact, feeling much younger than it is, even if the flavours have softened and merged into one another. This has aged absolutely perfectly: only subtle oxidation of the most elegant kind, soft and ‘tender’ as the brewery itself describes it – a completely different category from all those big and boastful liquor barrel aged stouts and barleywines you see fighting for attention these days. This Bonheur is humble, gentle and restrained, yet at the same time extremely elegant, refined and sophisticated. A memorable experience – the best one Leite ever offered in my opinion, in spite of having enjoyed many of their other creations in all those years.