I figure I might as well start the blog off for the year with something that seems to have escaped most of the English-speaking beer world – a new gueuze blender! Awesome.
Gueuzerie Tilquin will be based in Bierghes (appropriate town name, hey?) just down the road from Lembeek, and being over the linguistic divide will produce the first Wallonian gueuze.
What’s even more incredible is that they are the first gueuze blender to be allowed to use Cantillon lambic.
More fun facts:
The blender has worked at Huyghe and spent six months with Armand Debelder at Drie Fonteinen.
My Dutch is really rusty but it looks like the aging room is temperature controlled (like 3F) at 19ºC and the barrels themselves come from Bordeaux, Cornas and Crozes-Hermitage. Production is planned at 500hL a year, which seems like a fair bit.
This is all looking very promising.
The first batch of gueuze is supposed to be available in May or June 2011. I can't wait.
[Good to see the world's only German gueuze blender Ulli get a mention in that article. The guy buys lambic in the Pajottenland and ages and blends it at home near Aachen (I think). Oh to live in Europe.]
