With it so plentiful in Alberta, it can be easy to forget just how fortunate we are to have a regular supply of Cantillon Lambics. I have said before that I consider Cantillon to be the ideal example of this difficult, rare and challenging style. In fact, it was my hours at the Cantillon brewery that awoke my passion for the sour beer. When the first shipment came to Alberta last year, I (with spousal approval) picked up a bottle of each one in stock (well, at LEAST one of each – I picked up multiples of my favourites). As it works out I have not opened a single one yet. Can’t quite see the reason at this point, as there is no hurry with these beer.

However, I have put a cap on my beer cellar, meaning when I bought the latest bottle available in Alberta – Fou’ Foune – I decided I should drink it right away, rather than store it. Which is what I did this past weekend. The Fou’ Fonue is an apricot  fruit lambic (I think it would be called “abricotier”), which may have made it easier to part with quickly – apricot is not one of my favourite fruit. (I tried translating fou foune, but got unreliable results – or at least unprintable results).

The beer is an expected turbid light straw, presenting a thick, tight blanket of bright white head. It LOOKS alive. The aroma is soft apricot velvet, a clean tart sourness and some other light fruit such as pear and peach. The beer opens with an apricot-like freshness blending with the classic Cantillon tartness. The sourness is puckering and clean, more like a tanniny red wine. The apricot rises in the finish, offering a fleshy sweetness and biting finish. Most dominantly a lambic-sharp, angular tartness, with some mustiness and barnyard for complexity and depth. The apricot adds a light fruit and seems to accent the tartness in a way, rather than cut it.

This is Cantillon we are talking about, so I can offer no other conclusion than it is a marvelous beer. I always love those moments of savouring th mouth-puckering sourness of lambic. I will say, though, that of all the Cantillon’s I have sampled, this is not my favourite. It might be my ambivalence to apricot. But it might also be that the sharp apricot tang is insufficiently distinguished from the lambic tartness. Just a thought.

However, my beer-avoiding spouse had a couple of sips and declared it a winner. She really enjoyed it. So that says something. Now I just need a good reason to open one of the bottles in my cellar.