7.4

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7.5 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7

750 ml capped & corked bottle, Oogst 2023, at Cardinal, Stavanger. ABV is 6.95%. Signal red colour, pours vigorously sparkling with a large pink head that does not last very long. Intense aroma of raspberries, with crushed red grapes and lactic acid in the background. Medium sour flavour of raspberries, red grapes and lactic acid.

8

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8

Oogst 2023 Flamingo pink head, medium but stable over deep flamingo-red beer. Putteke, sulphur, cherrystones, raspberries. Later intense raspberries with some vulcanized rubber. Quite sour, raspberry and again vulcanized rubber, sulphury, lightly vinous. Outspoken acids, fruity & lactic, maybe some malonic. Lipsmacking acidity, acidthinning and -burn, certain fruitslickness/wheat. For beign velvet (fluweel), I'd say it has just a tad too much acidburn. OK, great fruitlambic, even if the raspberries completely dominate the grapes.

6.8

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7

A slightly hazy purple red beer with a purple head. Aroma of tart red berries, beetroot. Taste of sour red berries, grapes, blackcurrant, fizzy.

8

Zachte karnemelk met mooie fruitigheid

8.1

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

Bottle pour at Arrogant Sour Festival 2024. Hazy red with pinkish head. Fruity, lots of raspberries, red berries, some barrel, red grapes, juicy. Medium sourness.

8

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8.5 | Texture - 9 | Overall - 8

One of the many ways lambic has expanded and innovated itself in recent years, thanks to the global craft beer movement, is the combination of different species of fruit in one lambic - Lambiek Fabriek's Pluri-Elle being one notable example (I obviously ignore sweetened and pasteurized marketing products like e.g. Timmermans Woudvruchten Lambiek). For Boerenerf, this particular way of working seems to come as natural as can be, considering they even blend lambic with mead, or cider; so it should not come as a surprise that they now present this Fluweel (a name almost reminiscent of Nevel's or Tommie Sjef's house styles in naming), combining raspberries and (Muscat Bleu) grapes, the latter originating from Switzerland but also grown in Belgium. Opens with a bang (but no gushing); even before pouring, I can hear the carbon dioxide raging in the bottle, in waves even, like the battering surf at the seaside - this must be the 'loudest' beer I ever heard, but isn't it wonderful that beer - or lambic - is capable of exciting literally all the senses... Medium thick, pale lilac-pink, tiny-bubbled, quickly opening but otherwise long-retaining, yet eventually dissolving head over a deeply hazy, warm carmine red robe with magenta glow. Quite a funky and earthy, but fascinating and obviously also very fruity nose of clear red raspberries, red grapes but far less powerful in their pure 'grapey' way than the raspberries and manifesting themselves differently, farmland, cooked heirloom tomatoes, damp hay in late summer, moist clay, barnyard, raw red cabbage, beetroot, stewed blue plums (probably an effect from the Muscat grapes), purple gooseberries, redcurrant, wet wood, tomato concentrate (the raspberries, no doubt), horse stable, homemade Greek yoghurt, Roosvicée. Berry-like, juicy tartness in the onset, very raspberry-forward at first with a sharper lemony edge and a more meek tomato-ish sweet-sour-umami combo, both polished and enriched by the Muscat grapes, adding vinosity and fleshiness; an edgy lemony streak runs along the sides, reinforced by spritzy, 'champenoise' carbonation. Very rounded, full, almost creamy mouthfeel, 'deep' yoghurty lactic acid pulling the strings of breadiness, fruitiness, tarness and fleshiness - with wood creeping in slowly near the end, tannic and a tad vanilla-ish in combination with the seeds and skins of the fruit. Considerable funkiness appears retronasally, with aromas immediately taking me back to an old-timey farm or the farmland surrounding it - but this time including the overgrown raspberry bushes and dusty forgotten cellared bottles of decades old Saint-Emilion wine I explored at my late grandmother's premises when I was a just a country boy. Before I become overly poetic: this Fluweel has much to tell, this is more 'rustic' and rural than many of the sleek and measured fruit lambics one sees flooding the lambic market in recent years; it breathes history, grounding and heritage. As natural as possible, one can taste both fruits, complementing each other without conflict, as if biting in them, all topped with a thick earthy barnyard sauce. Not the most accessible fruit lambic I had, but digging deep into it, one I will certainly remember for a long time.