Cantillon Vigneronne

on tap at hopleaf. pours a beautiful hazy tangerine color with almost no head. aroma is very tart, orangy, vinegary, and slight funk. flavor is very tart and sour (more like a gueuze) with some faint undertones of white grapes. finishes tart with chardonnay qualities. i was expecting more from the muscat grapes but after getting settled with this i begin to fall for the subtleness of the fruit. enjoyed a lot but this isn’t one of the best from cantillon.

Too date on of the most amazing beers I have ever had, tart champange like complex and sour. Shared this beer with Neil Herbst owner of Alley Kat after one of camRA’s real ale fests. Page 101 0f Michael Jackson’s Great Beer Guide only 441 Classic Brews to go out of 500.

750ml into tumbler. Purchased by my mom at Discount Liquor, Milwaukee, as a NYE gift. Overall: different in small ways from Cantillion gueuze, but pretty much straightforward Cantillon quality lambic (which might be disappointing if you were expecting more muscat).

Superficial: Pale hazy orange with a "now you see me, now you don’t" fizzy white head. No lacing, no racing. Smell is not intense, but persistent and pervasive, wafting out of the bottle and glass to fill the immediate area with aromas of sour brett, cardamom, dried apricot and sour grape.

First impressions: Good Cantillion sour bomb at first (like gueuze), lemony; feel is a bit thin and watery after the sour subsides; not much of the yeasty spiderwebs I expect on the top of my tongue in the finish; 20 sec after swallow comes the faint and thin muscat flavor promised on the label.

Deeper: The middle does have some dark yeasty/spidery things that remind me of Girardin White Label, plus some corriander. Also, this is distinctly salty right after the swallow, a nice counterpoint to the juicy sourness. Beginning of the finish is vaguely like a nutty cheese, like gouda.

Bottle, 2005 vintage at Akkurat. So first of all , this had some age on it... I didn’t have the regular gueuze to compare with, but to me, this seemed pretty much like Cantillons usual stuff. Couldn’t really pick out any grape character at all, luckily I have a really fresh vintage waiting in the wings and I’m eager to see if that’s going to make a difference. Re-rate, 2006 vintage. Yup.. drink this as fresh as possible for maximum grape character.. what a difference!

Bottle at Ølbaren. Yellow - small white head. Wood, gooseberries, sweet, smooth compaired to other cantillon. Almost no carbonation.

Yet another great Cantillon product. Aroma was white grapes, musty, acidic with the usual nut-check barnyard aroma. Flavors were suprisingly soft for a Cantillon, with the muscat grapes demanding attention with the other flavors bouncing around. It has the usual Cantillon calling card flavors but it’s not quite as mouth stripping as say..the regular gueuze. Very enjoyable and worth every penny.

Bottle at Horsens beerfestival. Yellow/ orange colour with a white head.Aroma is sour, yeast. Flavour is sour, yeast, fruit, citrus.

Clear yellow body with a very small white head. Aroma was that of a typical lambic beer with barnyard and all that good stuff. That’s where the fun stopped for me. To say that this beer is vinous and fruity would be the biggest understatement since Noah said it looked like rain. This is as much a white wine as it is a lambic. Very delicate, a bit sour, full of white grapes and cheesy yeast. This is an original well brewed beer but it’s not for me.