Alpine Beer Company Chez Monieux

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Pours slightly hazy amber with a thin pale buff head. Aroma offers sharp, tart fruity and subtle malty notes. Tart flavor presents fruity and fresh malt notes. Body has decent fizz and a spur fruity note.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 10 | Mouthfeel: 10 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 9

memories...like a dancer in the clouds??? thank god for written notes, lots of underipe fruit... sour wood and cherry ... some sweet vinegar .. outrageous i say, in my head at least . ..

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Bottle courtesy of Gford217: Poured a light red color ale with a light pink bubbly head with some average retention and no lacing. Aroma consists of red wine and tart notes with some light sour cherries. Taste is a mix between some sour cherries, with some tart notes with loads of oak and some red wine notes. Average carbonation with limited funk notes when I was expecting a lot more from the description. Overall, I though this was easily drinkable and maybe a bit light for the kind of beer it would like to be.

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Bottle shared by Bill Batten of Alesmith. Pours a clear, rose body topped by a thin white head with some lacing. It’s sour with a touch of underlying sweetness from the cherries. Becomes tart in the finish. Light bodied, crisp and dry.

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

As I pour this brew I smell a funky, ripe wash-rind cheese note along with a musty moldy note. The pour barely forms a one finger thick, pale, off-white colored head that quickly disappears to a thin layer of not quite covering froth. The beer is a deep honey color that shows a hazy, red stained, light amber color when held up to the light. A deeper draught of the aroma yields a sour fruitiness that reminds me of a mix of cranberry and sweet cherry juice (think a light wiff of the cherry syrup topping for a sunday). Buttery popcorn aromas are fairly pronounced, though I can't quite tell if this is oak influence or diacetyl (pediococcus perhaps). The buttery aromatics drown out a lot of the other notes in the nose, but there does seem to be some spicy oak character here and the tart cherry notes are usually noticeable.

Tart tasting up front, but it quickly picks up a very slight, soft sweetness. Cherry pie flavors quite distinctly show off the signature of the Montmorency cherry character, but are not an over the top influence on the flavor. The combination of sour flavors and cherry notes are perhaps the biggest flavor contributors, but there is some other things going on here as well. The cherry sort of tastes like watered down, tart cherry juice. The finish has a light oak-derived spiciness to it, while the buttery note from the aroma is almost non-existent in the flavor (leading me to believe that it was the oak that contributed this in the first place, if it was diacetyl it would have been all over the flavor). Fairly light bodied, the beer does have a slight viscousness to it, though it remains a fairly refreshing, definitely easily quaffed experience.

As my palate gets used to it, some of the buttery-oak character from the aroma creeps into the flavor (really it becomes noticeable as it seeps into the nasal passages while taking a sip), it remains fairly light and is found more up front than anything. The cherry notes are fairly simplistic here; tart, fleshy, cherry pie notes show up somewhat softly, but it is missing that deeply staining, cherry skin flavor, that tannic cherry bite, the light almond-like pit character and the deeply complex, vibrant, fleshy cherry character that I like to see in the best examples of the style.

A very interesting beer, I definitely like it, but it falls far short of the best beers that it was inspired by (assuming that Kriek Lambics were the inspiration for this brew). It doesn't have the intense cherry flavors, nor the bracing acidity and funkiness of the examples that I like best. It really is like a Lambic for those who are interested, but not quite up to the harder versions of the style. Don't mistake me though, it clearly separates itself from the fake fruit Lambics being produced. In the end this is a tasty tipple that I am happy to have tried, but I wish it was not so one-dimensionally dominated in the nose had a bit more complexity and depth to the flavor.

Purchased: South Bay Drugs Pharmacy, Imperial Beach CA