Pizza Port Cuvee de Tomme

Brewed by Port Brewing/Lost Abbey
Style: Belgian Strong Ale
San Marcos, California USA

GABF ’07. Pours cloudy brown with a spare, rocky, light brown head, diminishing with spare lacing. Aroma is heavy malt (cookie, caramel, nutty), average hops (flowers, grass), average yeast (leather, earth) with notes of cola and vanilla. Full bodied, alcoholic texture, average carbonation, and a bitter finish. Average duration, moderate sweetness, light acidity and bitterness.

Pours dark red. Fruit on the nose, with loads of oaky vanilla. Good fruit flavors, and acidic sourness, mellowed by vanilla oak flavors, warming and smooth. I haven’t had anything like this before. Very good.

Tampa RB Gathering Beer #11....courtesy BeanDip....Black Label version....dark brown, almost black pour, small light tan head....nose of raisins, rum soaked bread, dark fruits, malts and candied sugars....fore is raisiny and full of lively candied sugars....also get more of that delicious rum soaked fruit bread....lively carbonation....warming on the palate, medium to full bodied....finish is warming and lengthy

375ml Lost Abbey Bottle (Thanks Secret Santa!), Poured deep brown with a reddish hue. There was no head with the initial pour, but I managed to kick up some bubbles with swirling. Beautiful tart sour cherry aroma, along with oak notes. Incredibly complex flavor with tart cherries, wood, dates, raisin, wet leather and vinous notes. Tart cherry and oak finish. This beer is a masterpiece.

absolutely fantastic! cherry and strawberry with great swings between sweet and sour. the unexpected highlight of the evening.

Same beer as the Aug. 25th 2007 Barrel Tasting event except this time it has been in a bottle for a while. Pours hazy brown copper with thin tan head. It has a big fruity complex aroma with a layer of tartness, cherries, cherries and more cherries. I also get barrel wood notes and it is smelling rich and inviting. As big a flavor as the nose led onto, wow. Lots of cherries that quickly become tart and leaning up against a wood barrel (yes, a cherry leaning on a barrel, that’s what it tastes like. How can my taste buds be wrong?). This is bold in flavor with the tartness building and building into the finish. Nice refreshing brew bringing up sweet fruity cherries turning tart and then there’s an undercurrent of a wood note that sneaks in every so often. Ends with lingering cherry fruitiness and tartness. It seems much more tart than when I tasted straight from the barrel last year at the Barrel Tasting event.

Tasted at Lost Abbey’s 1st Annual Barrel Tasting (Aug. 25, 2007) pours like a port wine or coffee with a reddish tint. The aroma is big consisting of oak, green grapes, raisins, dates, a little bit of hay and new freshly wetted burlap. The flavor stacked up much the same way as the aroma. The fruitiness is rich, somewhat sweet and inviting with green grapes, plums, dates, raisins and hints of fresh boysenberries. Well, sort of boysenberry-ish. The fruit notes were melded nicely together making them tough to discern yet they were also punchy in their evenness. To round out the flavor mellow notes of oak and vanilla mix effortlessly with the fruit.

2003 vintage. The resounding glow from a dark cherry red pour is gorgeous, one of the prettiest expressions of my favorite color scheme in a beer I have encountered. The body has transparent liquid spots intertwined with twirling haze, glittering carbonation streaming upward. The mid-sized light beige head with dark tan swirls recedes slowly and imparts bold circular lacing that slowly drips downward. Brettanomyces roars from the glass as it’s lifted for the first nosing. Fresh cherries, multi-varietal and both tart and decadently sweet, follow and release crafty hints of sugar-coated chocolates and raw oak. Belgian yeast is glorious and even-tempered, forcible while exuding elegance only an unadulterated strain from that country produces. Caramelized brown sugar and figs are next, sharp tangents shooting from each glimpse into this incredibly complex offering. Traces of rock sugar comliment the oak and sour/tartness and bring up the rear. This is a vinous and reluctantly authentic aroma, pleasing and challenging. The flavor is extremely vinous and sharp, with yeast in the corners and sour brawling with sweet in the middle of the ring. Rum raisin cake is introduced early. Sour levels are high, tartness puckering and bulbous, sweetness medium and spices from yeast and barrel alike are boorish and popping. Astringency is high and though it has mellowed(18 month old sample) it’s still a kick in the teeth. Woodiness now takes on an earthy character, completed with a musty outlook and a focused inward tannic swirl that grabs hold and migrates into dark recesses in the corners of the mouth. Alcohol is marvelously masked until a pounding and unforgiving finish takes its first step towards the inevitable ingraining effect it will hold in memory for years to come. Warmth grows as sharp vinous notes glide freely down the throat and back up again, this time with sharper astringency, moderately drying out the entirety of the affected area. Sour cherry pits and sugar lingers. The mouthfeel is light-medium, with silky carbonation and spongy fruit syrup in tightly wound pockets that bounce around inside the mouth. The ultra-extraordinary vinous character and similarities to a very old Super-Tuscan red wine are what make a carefully cellared sample of this beer most unforgettable. Delicious, though young samples have proven less enticing. One to buy and forget about for awhile.

#500. Enjoyed @ Rudolf’s Sour Tasting with Rudolf, IPFreely, Jerc & frylock. Special thanks out to Rudolf & Angela for their great hospitality. Wow is this complex. 375ml. Port like character, brett funkiness, oak, caramel sweetness, sour cherry. The complexity is amazing. very impressive