Romanian barleywine aged on port barrels and flavoured with grape extract and cinnamon, quite an elaborate formula, thanks to Craftmember for sharing. Medium sized, pale yellowish-beige, opening and dissipating head lacing in shreds over a misty mahogany brown beer with ruddy hue (on the darker side of the barleywine EBC spectrum). Aroma very strongly dominated by cinnamon (powder) bringing associations with cinnamon rolls and even Apfelstrudel, white port or indeed sweet white grapes but in a sugary and ‘processed’ manner, pan-fried sweet apples, caramel, Brazil nuts, black cherries, vanilla-scenting oak wood, blackberry coulis, biscuit, dried fig, ‘boerenjongens’, nougat. Sweet, clean, sleek onset, raisins, fried apple and candied fig, even a touch of ‘sirop de Liège’, somewhat sticky from sweetness; softish carb, oily and full mouthfeel. Biscuity and caramelly malt core with residual sugariness but also a persistent sourish streak presumably representing the grape flavouring (indeed very sweetly white grape-like), topped with mild woody tannins (and retronasal vanillin) plus that wave of cinnamon overwhelming everything, followed by a warming, port-like alcohol glow, turning a tad astringent in the very end. Hops remain a pure formality. Very desserty, sweet, dark-wintery ale, more like some Christmas beer than ‘true’ Anglo-Saxon barleywine which traditionally is not flavoured – so I wonder why all that cinnamon was necessary, it really overpowers the rest here and drives the attention away from the barleywine concept. Yet, if sweet Apfelstrudel- or mulled wine-flavoured winter ales are your thing and you really love cinnamon, then I guess this is one for you, because all things considered, it is not badly executed at all and does show skill and personality in spite of its desserty focus.

Cherries, alcohol, woody, sweet, sugary, jammy