Millésime 2023 Very fine & spritzy carbonation to small if stable white head over veiled orangey golden beer. White wine, sparkling wine, floral, farmyard wafts. Not really sweet, but still sweeter as expected from a Brut beer. Sorrel, lemon, sour grapes, green apples. Pepperish horseflavour. Acidburn and -thinning, fine carbonation - better carbonated than it looks in the glass. Nice. Almost more winey than beery. But in the result, I find no reasonable justification for the staggering price.

750mL bottle from Oud Beersel. Pours clear gold with a white head. Nose has a primarily white wine character with some must and old wood. Flavour has plenty white wine character, old wood, effervescent carbonation, musty. Very nice.

750mL bottle, pours a clear golden with a large, rapidly diminishing white head. Aroma has a wonderful champagne-like effervescence, soft grape skins, and leather. Flavour matches, almost drinking like a champagne, gently musty grape skins, and gentle leather. Like drinking a champagne indeed. Excellent.

Grape lambic with Furmint and Hárslevelü grapes – Hungarian varieties for a change – treated like champagne like the other Bzart lambics, including ‘remuage’ and ‘dégorgement’ for a clean effect, and finished with a ‘liqueur de tirage’, a shot of lambic with sugar in this case I assume, to guarantee a champagne-like sparkling. One of the newer Bzart variants, coming from a 75 cl champagne bottle with blue neckfoil, shared with Goedele and her sister Veerle. Snow white, moussey, initially foamy head quickly receding to an open, eventually dissolving ring – looking a bit like what happens when you pour champagne, but far more slowly (this is essentially a fruit beer and not actual wine, after all); more or less clear, pale blonde, indeed champagne-coloured robe with a string of sparkling in the middle. Aroma of dried grape seeds and skins, grape seed oil, old books and dusty bookshelves, green apple, cobwebbed oak closets, dry hay, lime peel, some horseblanket, the dry residue of a brut champagne, whitecurrant, hard pear, old lemon zest, cava. Very fruity and sparkly onset, sour grapes, gooseberries and green apples with just a touch of white wine sweetishness (very subtle), tart with high effervescence – though not as high as in actual champagne. Smooth, bready core, very vinous, with ongoing dry-tart yet very lively grape fruitiness and growing oaky and grape seed woodiness, further completed with Bretty funky notes and lactic acidity, reminding one that this is still very much lambic. Remains vivid, sparkly and crisp till the end, dry and complex, with green fruit (especially sour grape) lingering around for quite a while – even that mild white wine sweetish accent persists a bit, adding to the overall ‘champagne’ feel of this new creation. I guess that from all the beers I ever tasted and in spite of these top-fermented ‘bières brutes’ (Malheur and the like), this is the one that actually comes the closest to a dry sparkling wine in its overall visual and olfactory effects; it is often geuze that is traditionally referred to as “the champagne of beers”, but if this description is applied here, it can be taken a notch less metaphorically, even though lambic in all its funkiness, esteriness and breadiness is still in charge. Nevertheless a wonderful creation, one worth presenting to a sparkling wine lover in an attempt to lure them over into the beer world…