Bottle. Bit hazy orange deep golden, looks nice. Mirabelle, nectarine, wheat, soft zesty citrus, oak, dry cellar notes, white cheese. The mirabelles are there, bit not super aromatic, more like the finish of a Mirabelle not the aroma when you bite into one. Over medium sour, under medium sweet. Medium bodied, spritzy carbonation. Quite nice, but a bit on the sour side.

Ah, the humble mirabelle plum... Once again I am taken back to my childhood deep in the polders of the Waasland region in East Flanders, where my grandmother offered me these fruits as a child, harvested by hand in her orchard, which was filled with old high-stem fruit varieties. Those days will never come back, but the memory of them and the things I acquired in those years, will be there to cherish for the rest of my life. I recall her insisting that mirabelles were not just plums - and indeed, they are something else, originating in the wild in parts of Eurasia by either crossing of regular (wild) plums with other Prunus species, or by evolving into a distinct subspecies of plum. Whatever the case, they are small, sweet, yellow plums which seem perfect to fit in lambic, so Boerenerf obtained mirabelles from the Alsace region in France and put them in a blend of their own lambics. Some slight gushing upon opening, but nothing to worry about if you have a glass nearby. Medium thick, egg-white, tiny-bubbled and dense, slowly opening yet otherwise well-retaining head over a cloudy peach blonde robe with somewhat 'milky' tinge, turning into a kind of 'tea with milk' look in the end. Aroma of sweet ripe yellow plums (a bit overripe even), pear blossoms, fruit yoghurt, slight mandarin, a faint but surprising whiff of exotic fruit (lychee or even cherimoya), sour cream, clover, dry haystack, noble oak wood, white peaches, young tree leaves in spring, field flowers, freshly fermented farmland in the background growing stronger as the content of the bottle progresses. Crisp, tart onset, prickly and minerally effervescence piercing through a wave of sweet-sour ripe mirabelle plums adding fleshiness throughout, with these more astringent edges reminiscent of unripe nectarine and wild berries; rounded, full body, a supple breadiness under drying lactic sourness, slight lemony accents and an earthy yeast presence, but brightening up again retronasally, when the mirabelles exude this 'rosy' kind of summer stonefruit odour in, again, an almost overripe way. Hints of pear and not-quite-ripe lychee lurk in the background, while woody tannins assist the acids - part of them coming from the fruit - in establishing a drying, yet persistently juicy, creamy, 'autumn-fruity' finish. Some funky notes pop up (damp hay) but it really is the fruit that shines most brightly, as if biting in a whole heap of very ripe mirabelles at once. Quite an indulgent, rich and 'fleshy' lambic, in which the lambic itself is almost subordinate to the fruit - which is shown here in its most versatile and multi-faceted form possible. Imagine opening a bottle like this with friends at a table sitting under a high-stem fruit tree in an orchard in early summer - this is mirabelle plum wine 'infected' with those beautiful lambic yeasts, and it could not have been more beautiful, pure and 'natural' than this. This one shows the possibilities of the old mirabelle like no other lambic has ever done with this fruit before (though admittedly, there are not many mirabelle lambics around, certainly not fixed range). Stunning.

On tap at Moeder Lambic Fontainas. Cloudy orange with white head. Some funk, stone fruit, beautiful plums, fruity and juicy. Vibrant and refreshing. Medium bodied.

From tap at Moeder Lambiek Fontainas, Brussels, 18.04.24. Cloudy peach colour. Some white head. Fine aroma and taste of acidity, brett, pale malt and plums. Good!