Cantillon St. Lamvinicus

Recently you may have noticed a new Belgian lambic in our cooler from Cantillon called St. Lamvinus. Lambics are often called the champagne of beers and this beer definitely tries to blur the line of wine and beer and one has to wonder on if it is really beer, or is it wine?
St. Lamvinus is actually a two-year-old Cantillon lambic fermented in oak casks along with wine grapes from France, and then siphoned directly into the bottles. The type of grapes used, and the wineries in France that supplies them, are different every year. Usually it is made with a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc grapes. This years vintage however is made with pure Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. The name St. Lamvinus is a small pun: 'lam' referring to lambic beer, 'vinus' is latin for 'wine,' and the whole thing, 'St. Lamvinus,' meant to remind you of St. Emilion, one of the most famous wine appellations in Bordeaux where most of the previous years vintages of grapes came from. A few years ago I spent a few days touring wineries in that region and I must say that the wines we had from that area were all fantastic. I had to drink wine because you couldn't find any beer but that is another story.
This is as close as you can come to a marriage of wine and beer, and even though it is not the only beer they make with grapes it is certainly the most special. One thing that makes this beer so unique is the care that they use when picking the grapes for it. It turns out the owner of Cantillon is also somewhat of a wine geek and has many French friends that are great winemakers. Cantillon puts in about 130 pounds of grapes in each oak barrel, which turns out to be over a pound of grapes per bottle. They also remove the stems from the grapes in a process called 'égrappage' by French winemakers – which makes the finished product considerably more expensive. They remove the stems because the stems contain bitter tannins, and their removal produces a more delicate wine. A rougher, more tannic wine would likely not have mixed well with some of the flavors in a lambic. This is in total contrast to other fruit beers, such as the Kriek, for which the entire fruit, including the pit, is added to the cask, lending a mild nutty flavor to the beer.
The two year old beer, which is thoroughly infused with the fermented grape juice is bottled right out of the cask. A small bit of sugar is added to each bottle to spark a little refermentation and carbonation. The result is a seamless blend of two-year (mid-aged) lambic – not as mild as a young lambic, and not as sour and acidic and strong-flavored as a three-year-old lambic– and a very fresh wine that would obviously, left on its own, develop a lot of character over time.
Unlike other Lambics that you can buy and lay down and age for 10 to 20 years you shouldn't do that with this one since St. Lamvinus will probably not hold up longer than a year or two. After time, the lambic beer will begin to get the upper hand, and the acidic lambic flavors will overwhelm the more delicate winey grape flavors. That's the theory, anyway and you want to drink this one to enjoy the great grape flavors so if you buy one, drink it.
The 2003 St. Lamvinus, which was bottled at the very end of the year, has just arrived in the U.S. I did taste it at the brewery in March this year, and can report that it is just fantastic. If memory serves me correctly (I did have a few beers that day), it had a more wine-like color than in previous years and much more winelike flavor.
This is probably the best St. Lamvinus yet, made only with the weightier, more intense cabernet sauvignon grapes and aged in old port casks. This beer has been shipped irregularly to the United States for a few years. This year there were about 70 cases shipped to the importer. A case contains 6 bottles so you can see that there isn't a lot of it to go around and the price reflects both the scarcity and the brewers love that went into the beer. It isn't cheap at $43.99 per bottle but it is one that the true beer and wine connoisseurs should enjoy.
Prost, Ron