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Breweries — it’s beer and it’s brewed here
Cantillon can take a bit of time to understand… ‘Do you get your water from the canal outside?’ asked my mate the Maltworm, the first time I visited Cantillon in Brussels (living in the city for several years he’d been before and knew what to expect, but was still capable of asking the odd daft question). No answer came, just the sort of look the brewery’s totemic Jean-Pierre Van Roy probably reserved for those who asked for a glass of Jupiler, oh and could I have a slice of lemon on the side of the glass garçon. ‘What do you think?’ the look seemed to say. Of course the water came from the mains. This was 1997 after all.
This was 1997 and I just didn’t get lambic — lambic, a glass of, offered, looked at, sniffed, looked at once more, striking the mouth with a flash of sourness and astringency; gulped down, something to be experienced, like a parachute jump or a playground dare (‘dare you ask Deborah Roberts for a date’). Far easier then, it was to have a chalice of Chimay, a dark and rich vice, soothing and capable of, after many a chalice, of making a cat squeak. Or, a particular favourite, La Chouffe, with its sprightly selection of Ardennoise Diddymen cavorting on the label and herby, spicy, peppery, alcoholic gavotte on the tongue. Cobwebs then hung in the rafters, there was a sense of ancient brewing, a rare sight, only glimpsed in several other places: Ridley’s long-gone, rural idyll of a tower brewery with its old wooden desks at which the clerks used to sit and wait to go home with the odd bottle of Harvest Ale, or the old Randall’s brewery in Guernsey (in a dusty old corner, several crates of a 1960s bottled IPA with rusty metal tops — you could get a few quid for that off a beer geek I told the then owner, little knowing he wouldn’t be there for too long). Yet, lambic was a challenge and I still blush to remember that over several years I drank one every Christmas morning with a cube of sugar dissolved in the glass. How delicious, how derring-do, how lacking in challenge.
Take the Tardis to 2005 — here we go again, part of a press trip around the breweries of Wallonia. Tensions between myself and another member of the group, to whom Cantillon was the Arthurian ideal brought to life, cast a shabby shadow over the visit. Further angst ensued as said writer warned about the profusion of dodgy deals in the neighbourhood, robbery and thievery was rife — I had a brand new laptop and was loath to part company with it. It came round the brewery, heavy in my case, an impediment to camera and notebook, as my colleague nearly exploded with the thrill of visiting a brewery that he’d probably last been at several months before. The highlight, he said? Cherries were being added to a long maturing lambic for the next stage of Cantillon’s extraordinarily challenging Kriek. ‘I’m glad I’ve been here,’ said another, much younger, much more immune to the myth, writer, ‘but I don’t half fancy a pint of Jupiler.’
December 2008, yet another visit. Third time lucky, or a glutton for punishment? Inside the warmth of the mash, the aroma of mashing cereal, a different feel to the cold and wet of the winter outside. Copper cool ships, the ancient practices of brewing; vents in the roof, now webless, through which the wild yeast can penetrate. Bags of malt lined up, pilsner malt from Bamberg, a smoke-free beer zone though. In the barrel store, a sharp vinous nose, vinegar, oak, sour cherries, all different vintages, years chalked upon their sides. Here the lambic slumbers, sleeps, the silence of slow maturation. There is something legendary about this big sleep and the idea of the marriage of various vintages. It’s a nostalgic brewery, a fixed point in a world of David and Goliath; a museum also, a reminder of how things were, a romance. A man washes a cask, watched, as if in a zoo. The dignity of labour, though he probably wonders why folk from across the world come and drink a beer that he cannot fathom. Or does he? The building still has a sense of what I imagine could be the fin de siecle feel of shabby late 19th century, before the sweep of the awful broom of world war.
Tasting finally: a six month gueuze has an earthy, organic nose with a champagne like sharpness on the palate; it is tart, refreshing, dry and leaves a grapefruit-like fruitiness in the back of the mouth. In fact, I prefer this to champagne. The Kreik is 2½ years old with cherries being added six months before. It’s a rose coloured beer, with a nose of sour cherry and cough linctus. Tartness, sourness, cherry fruit swirl about in the mouth; it’s underwhelming but more interesting than the faux-fruit beers made with syryp. A return to the gueuze. I have finally got Cantillon. And here’s another reason why you should get Cantillon
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