8.5

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

(750ml bottle @ Sardines, Quebec City, Aug 12/23) Pours lightly hazed medium gold with a small but persistent white head and no lace. Aroma is complex with an excellent expression of wild apple flesh that's both sweet and tart, matched with pale oranges, soft lactic and just a twang of acetic acid, underlying barely bready cereals, nice rustic funk on the less mulchy barnyard side, good barrel presence. Flavour follows the nose with high concentration, lightly sweet and lightly to moderately acidic, again lots of wild apples with a touch of sweeter fruit too, light citrus, lactic acid with a bare hint of cider vinegar, funk is complex and nicely integrated, dry and a little earthy with hay and good barrel presence, finish is semi-dry, juicy seam of tart apple carrying through, good barrel structure, soft hay bitterness and a litlte tannin from the apple pomace, a little vinous in the back end. Medium-bodied, slightly slick, with lovely fine filling carbonation from bottle conditioning. What an incredible surprise, this was even a little better than the Auval we had after in terms of flavour concentration, complexity and balance. High praise indeed.