Franc

Carnivale Brettanomyces 2023. Pours a nice deep red colour and a light pink head. Aroma's: sourish, funky, red fruit (more like cherries than grapes), wood. Retronasal it's sourish, wood, tannines, vanilla, red fruit (again cherries), cherry pits. Flavour is above moderate sour, fruit, vanilla. Medium bodied. Long finish, somewhat dry. Delicious.

Grape 'lambic' (technically sour ale) by this talented Dutch brewer, containing Cabernet Franc and Blaufränkisch grapes and aged on Amarone barrels - a complex premise. Birthday gift from Bart, thanks man! Medium thick, off-white, tiny-bubbled and quite stable head, breaking from the middle but retaining for a while around the edge and with a flat veil in the middle, eventually completely dissolving though; initially clear, warm vermillion red robe with deep copper glow and lots of sparkling, shifting to a misty ruby red further on and a cloudy burgundy in the end. Aroma of grape skins and grape seeds but also very dry white wine, old rosé champagne, lots of oak wood, redcurrant, unripe red plum, crabapple, lemon juice, raw rhubarb, hints of cherry pits, dry haystack, some dusty attic and dark green tree leaves; damp earth to even a touch of dung come in as the bottle progresses, but remain volatile and non-offensive. Sour onset, very crisp and puckering, lemony and redcurrant-like with sharpish but fine-bubbled, 'champenoise' effervescence; soon after the initial acidity, yoghurty lactic tartness appears but in a fruity, juicy way, under a full red grape flavour, indeed recognisably Cabernet Franc, with outspoken yet elegant grape skin tannins, in themselves reinforced by tannins from the oak wine barrels. All this is built on a slender, smooth cereally malt base; the grapes only increase in intensity further on, even adding fructose sweetness, as in red apple, ripe red berries and red plum. Ends very grapey, vinous and dry; the tannic effects remain subordinate to the grape and lactic sourness and fruitiness so that the whole construction maintains a refreshing, appetizing and rounded elegance. It is easy to see why these Tommie Grape sours are so coveted in and around the Netherlands: the guy, young as he still is, creates beautifully elegant sours, perhaps a notch below the often amazing complexity of 'real' lambics, but certainly not far behind. This is one such marvellous grape sour, ticking all the boxes for me - the perfect beer-wine hybrid, in a sense, suitable to introduce wine people to beer, perhaps, if they can take the relatively high amount of sharper acids. Bright and fiery, but also gracious and rounded, absolutely classy.