Bittersweet in the best possible way

A Beer Called Lambic

An appetizing dryness, an invigorating tartness, and a complexity that rivals the finest sherry's; it's a beer boasting aromas suggesting everything from lush fruit to mineral earth; a beer that makes you suspect that everything else you know about beer is a lie. Great lambic is the brewing world's Holy Grail, Cantillon its most sacred temple.

A rarity today, lambic was once the defining drink of the Pajottenland, a rich agricultural region southwest of Brussels on the Senne River. Cast an eye on any of Brueghel's famous depictions of Flemish celebrations, and you'll spy jugs of what is believed to be the peasants' notorious "yellow beer" being consumed with great relish. In countryside cafés, you can still find the locals-many of whom look as if they'd stepped out of the masterpiece known as Peasant Wedding Feast-enjoying lambic poured from rough-hewn pitchers alongside plates of mussels, radishes, herbed cheese, and tête pressée (head cheese).

Likewise, parts of the world's most famous lambic brewery appear unchanged from Brueghel's time. At Cantillon, as at all traditional lambic breweries, scant attention is paid to the rules of modern beer making. Whereas other beers are fermented with carefully controlled yeast strains, lambics owe their fermentation to a wild party of airborne microflora that includes more than 100 identified yeast strains and 50 kinds of bacteria. Since virtually everything in the brewery is thought to have the microbiotic potential to affect this spontaneous fermentation, there is a certain endearing grubbiness to Cantillon. The air inside the brewery makes for an olfactory adventure, perfumed as it is with a musky potpourri of damp wood, wet grain, and a heady mix of barnyard aromas known collectively and affectionately as "horse blanket".

But lambic's unique microbiotic mix provides only part of the great beer's character. The winey, aggressively citric flavor of traditional lambic is also influenced by its years of aging in wooden barrels, some of them decades old, arranged in shadowy racks. Astringent notes are added through the use of a large percentage of unmalted wheat, along with the more typical malted barley. And in the case of the famed lambic called gueuze-produced by the méthode champenoise-like blending and bottle-refermenting of lambics at least one and up to three years old-the aging process plays a vital role in giving the beer an enormous complexity that makes it quite unlike any other.