Cascade The Vine

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

Vintage keg @Strangeways Dallas; 2017 edition. Clear, dark russet brown, ring of lace, goblet pour @Sideways Dallas. Vinous nose. Cherry juice, berry, serious lemon, old ale oxidation. Cherry, vinous, lime, serious oxidation, copper, vinegar sour sweet, sticky sour brown tasties. Still solid.

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

750 ml corked & caged bottle, at Cardinal Pub & Bar, Stavanger, Norway. Golden colour, white head. Aroma of white wine, oak, brettanomyces and white wine vinegar. Sour flavour, with the same elements as the aroma. Very good beer.

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

Pours a hazy, barely translucent apricot. Sour fruity notes dominate the aroma. Flavor is strongly fruity and rather sour but not so you’ll be making faces. Firm, fizzy, sour finish rounds out a fine blended wild ale.

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

On tap @ Cascade Barrel House. Pours a white grape juice color, highly carbonated, bubbly white head, little or no lacing. White wine/grape aroma, funky, tart, lightly spicy, zesty, both in flavor and nose. Very nice ale.

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

Long time wish list brew. Not a favorite as far as Cascade is concerned, but that's really not a knock. Cascade makes some of the best sours out there. This one is really good, just not among their best. Pretty nice marriage between sour blonde ale and wine. Seems like sauvignon grape (juice) and some bretty funky goodness. Pretty strong at 9.7% but the alcohol is barely noticeable. I could see white wine drinkers really liking this one. I prefer reds, but this was still really nice. Fairly strong sour/tartness going on on the palate.

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

Pour from a 750ml bottle. .. Pours light gold with a light pillow white head. .. lacing is medium .. .a touch funky .. . light lemon, with a mellow sweetness .. . mild and agreeable ... not as in your face as some other Cascades .. . . my man! you've gone granola!!

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

I grabbed a bottle of this when I was at the Barrel House yesterday. I've had 8 of the Cascade sour ales already, and this one is quite different than the others. White sparkling, fizzy head that didn't last too long. Clear orange color. Aroma is sour and fruity with the grape coming through. A little mustiness came in as well. This one is more puckering than the other 8 Cascade beers I've tried to date. Light-medium body, seems a little thin for the alcohol percentage. Has a grape sweetness that dries out at the end. More like a sparkling wine than a beer. Though not one of my favorites from master of NW sours, it is still a good beer.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 5

A solid pour into my 25cl tulip glass produces a three-finger thick, lightly tan colored head. The head leaves a nice layer of lace on the sides of the glass as it slowly subsides. The beer is a pretty, red-stained, copper color that shows a bright copper-gold color when held up to the light. The aroma smells quite sweet, with honey notes, a floral white-grape fruitiness, plus other aromatic notes of kiwi, ripe honeydew melon and ripe green apple note. Much of the sweetness that I noticed at first actually is contributed by the huge, aromatic ripe fruit character. The ripe fruitiness is almost too much here.

As I expected from the aroma, this beer is quite dry with very little sweetness. The tartness is not overly aggressive here, in fact much of it I would guess comes from the wine grapes, though there is certainly a lactic component here. This has a tropical fruit like note here that is I find in white wines at times. The finish has a bit of astringency and tannins from oak character, there is also a touch of heat from the alcohol, but this actually hides the alcohol pretty well for its strength. I am curious what grapes were used here, with the oak it can remind me of chardonnay, but the ample fruitiness reminds me a bit more of Sauvignon Blanc or Gewurztraminer. Floral tropical fruit notes with quite a bit of ripe melon are noticeable and while not as apparent as in the nose, still manage to be noticeable despite the lack of accentuating sweetness. Spicy, astringent oak adds some structure and bite to the finish that adds balance to the up front tartness and expressive dry fruitiness.

This is a far departure from the Sang Royale I had the other day. It doesn’t have nearly the finesse or balance that that one had, but it is still pretty tasty. An interesting beer, I can see this appealing quite a bit to some people, but I don’t seem to be one of those people unfortunately.