Gueuze 40-60
(has 1 batch)

Bottle. Side by side 60-40 (60% 1 year old, 40% 2 year old Lambic blend) and 40-60 (40% 1 year old, 60% 2 year old Lambic blend). Color: Both hazy golden to amber, thin white head. 40-60 looking slightly darker when standing next to each other. Aroma: Fruity, hay, subtle funky. 40-60 definitely more intense. Taste: 60-40 Fruity notes of lemon, unripe apricots and gooseberry, some wood, hints of hay, subtle funky, stable-like and light hints of leather. Moderate tartness. 40-60 Again more intense flavors. More wood and funk. Some more tartness. More complexity compared with 60-40. Not surprisingly given the older average age, but nice to compare them side by side. Overall score: 60-40 8 4 8 4 15 =3.9. 40-60 8 4 8 4 17 = 4.1.

One of two new geuze variations by Tilquin, lacking in three year old lambic (hence the absence of the qualification 'oude', which has legal implications) but using one and two year old lambic in opposite proportions - this one with more two year old than one year old lambic. Only in 37.5 cl bottles, with cork and muselet, this one with yellow label (the other one, with more one year old than two year old lambic, sports a blue label). Thickly moussey, egg-white, fizzing, pillowy, stable head on a hazy apricot blonde robe with pale orangey tinge and a cloud of dense, fiercely whirling sparkling throughout. Strong, estery and funky aroma of unripe yellow plum and nectarine, damp hay, armpit sweat, oxidized green apple, stale lemon juice, wet old wood, old cracked leather, dried hogweed, dusty dry earth, farmland in autumn, field sorrel, old jute bags, minerals. Spritzy, tart, crisp onset, lots of green apple, hard nectarine and some plum and gooseberry, lemony at the edges but not acetic, with very active, cava-like effervescence, adding lots of pleasant minerality; dry-bready, bready-crusty core under strongly drying lactic acid, ongoing stonefruity esters and growing woody tannins, becoming somewhat astringent in the end, along with this retronasal funkiness of old dusty attic, dry sweat, leather and old books - clearly more so than its 60-40 counterpart, which seems logical given the older average lambic age in this one. Lemony and gooseberry-like tartness lingers at the back, beyond all that woodiness, Bretty funkiness and dry 'lacticness', ensuring an, in all, quite refreshing finish. A deep and late but important, well-integrated old hop bitterness sits all the way at the back. This 40-60 version brings a bit more satisfaction than the 60-40 one, in showing more depth and complexity, more outspoken estery fruitiness, more vinosity and more funkiness; both differ more from each other than I was expecting, really. While the 60-40 was very balanced and crisp but to me lacked a bit of layeredness, this one builds up more 'vertically' and comes closer to the regular 'oude' geuze Tilquin. Quite a didactic duo, these two, teaching us about the influence of the different ages of the lambics that go into a traditional geuze - and doing so in a most delicious way.