Cantillon Bourgogne Lambic

Brewed by Cantillon
Style: Lambic - Unblended
Brussels, Belgium

Bottle. Golden colour with a fizzy weak head. Aroma of wine with some oak. Flavour of acid and sourness but someway little redwine like.

Bottle at RBESG grand tasting, August 2005. Hazy gold colour. Farmyard factor is moderate, lemon factor sky high. Definitely more fruity that the average Cantillon and relatively smooth. I prefer the edges a little rougher.

Bottle. Golden color with a white head. The taste is a complex sourness with lots of different patterns, fruits and spices, Very very nice.

Apricot, pear, barnyard and leather in the aroma. Complex and exciting. Opaque yellow-golden body with low but lasting white head. Barnyard, leather and sour fruit with moderat ebitterness. Strong, crisp carbonation to the medium-light body that finishes very dry and almost puckering. Bottle sampled at RBESG 2005.

RBESG 2005, Hazy yellow colour with a small off white head. Tart, light fruity arom with a dusty note. Fruity and light sour flavor with a short dry finish.

Bottle. Perhaps my favourite lambic. I love the way the gamey/woody/cherry/blood characters from the Bourgogne barrels, blend with the tart, very sour characters of Cantillons lambic. Juicy, and quite soft, so well balanced. My beer of the Euro summer gathering.

MASSIVE thanks to Jacob Lövenlund and his magical van o’ beer for giving me a bottle of what is one of the rarest beers I’m ever likely to drink. Sadly the beer itself didn’t quite live up to my expectations...

Bottled in 2005. An orange-coloured, balsamic-smelling deposit on the inside of the cap caused me some concern initially, but the beer seemed pretty normal to me. Very clear gold, some head retention which is always a bonus with Cantillon. Aroma was quite weird - something seemed a little off. A phenolic blue cheese aroma really dominated (took me back to the time I had a Roquefort salad which was like 50% Roquefort) with BO, apple cores and cider vinegar. After a while the blue cheese faded somewhat, enabling the Cantillon house character to come through more (especially the woodiness) with mushrooms, fetta, glue, nappies, stale hops and salad dressing. Barely any carbonation, body initially seems very light and delicate, though the more I drank the heavier it felt. Brief vinous character with faint hop, juicy, woody, acetic, Thorogoods-style cider stuff, especially towards the end, and quite sour. Perception of sweetness increases through the bottle. After a while it began to taste a lot like Cantillon’s lambic with a bunch of acetic acid. Lots of cider character, in fact way closer to cider than wine - the only thing the barrel seems to contribute is a way for oxygen to get at the beer (=>acetic acid.) Sadly this isn’t their best work - the acetic stuff just doesn’t work for me in this one.
Postscript: I only just realised this was a straight lambic aged in a wine cask, not a grape lambic. Whoops! I don’t think it would’ve changed my opinion of the beer at all.

RBESG05: Cloudy gold with a white head. Funky cheese, barn aroma with loads of sour grapes. Wonderfully fruity, juicy and citric. Really tasty lambic.