DVDK's dark barleywine - which I recall made an impression on me when it was first released in its regular form back in 2012 - aged partially on Italian wine barrels (yes, the famed Brunello) and partially on bourbon barrels; from a bottle of around one and a half years old I found at the Delhaize supermarket in the Dok Noord complex, a commercial redevelopment of an old industrial site at the old harbour docks in the northeast of Ghent. I had never visited this particular supermarket before (though I heard that they sell Dok Brewing Company beers cheaper than Dok itself, located less than two hundred yards further south on the same site), but I must admit I was stunned by their range of beers, some of which I not only never saw in another supermarket, but were also completely new to me. Thinnish and quickly breaking but regularly shaped, greyish off-white, tiny-bubbled head, forming a ring and some flat islands over an initially clear but quickly hazed, warm chestnut brown robe with terracotta- to ochre-shifting hue. Aroma of caramel sauce, lots of oaky vanilla, fortified wine 'à la' sweet sherry or sweet madera, bittersweet bourbon, port, cake, nougat, blue plum, 'kramiek', toffee, dried blueberries, molasses, dark candi sugar (strong), hints of champagne, almond, ripe pear, biscuit, vague chicory and peanut butter. Sweet onset in a dried-fruit way, somewhat 'trail mix'-like effect perhaps, fig, date, raisin, pear, dried apricot and prune, all sprinkled with dark candi sugar, extending its sweetness over a moderately carbonated, smooth and somewhat vinous body of layers of toffee, hazel- and peanut, bread pudding and slight toast, increasingly warmed by bittersweet bourbon and 'grapey' Brunello; the bourbon, however, far overpowers the wine, even if this refined, fortified wine-like, almost liqueurish effect keeps lingering, perhaps even conquering the bourbon in the very end - difficult to say, as this confrontation of flavours is overclouded by dark malts (both sweet and bitter but the sugar accentuates the sweetness - until a peanutty effect unexpectedly comes to the foreground long after swallowing!), very pronounced oak wood effects (vanilla!) and aromatic side effects of yeasty spiciness (clove), something very lightly 'meaty' (proteins) and soft floral hops. The fortified wine effect is very strong in this one, and is probably just the simple effect of Brunello being fortified by bourbon; under this strong and dominant effect, a slick dark beer resides which hovers somewhere in between quadrupel and actual Anglo-Saxon barleywine, tilted much more to the first than to the latter in my opinion (going for other Ensemble variants as well, of course). Rich, layered beer, but perhaps in a more subtle and 'hidden' way than most seem to expect; the ABV, however, is unnecessarily high for me, 9-10% would have done the job just as well, but that is just my personal opinion. In any case, this is one demanding sipper for a night even colder than this one - I should have waited for a month or more to open it, but could not resist. In short: adequate barleywine vibes in a Belgo-Dutch kind of way with dominant fortified wine-like effect - and sweeter than expected, too.

11/X/25 - 75cl bottle @ Cybu’s birthday party, BB: 15/IX/27, lot: 2024/0139 (2025-1003) Thanks to Bene (I think?) for sharing the bottle!

Clear orange blond beer, big solid creamy off-white head, unstable, falls down pretty quickly, adhesive, leaving a nice lacing in the glass. Aroma: nice, pretty fruity, juicy, apples and pears, sweet impression, some honey. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: bitter, hoppy, fruity, apples, bitter, dry, a bit grassy, resinous touch. Aftertaste: very hoppy, bitter, resinous, more bitter, dry, yeasty, brett, funky, a bit woody, some tannins.

Würzig getreidiger Beginn, Karamell. Herb-hefig, sehr trockener Hintergrund, röstig, langer Nachhall, nett. 9/10/9/9//9

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