Saveur

Navigating the twisting, turning streets of Brussels, I wassurprised to find myself squinting in the light of the sun's raysas they boldly cut through the city's customary gloom. This is abeer drinker's town-with more interesting brews and good places inwhich to enjoy them than perhaps any other place in the world-andit has a beer drinker's climate, its usually gray days more suitedto the insides of dark cafés than to outdoor boulevards andparks. Still, I had many blocks yet to cover on foot, so I welcomedthe sunlight.

The brightness vanished the minute I opened a creaky wooden dooron rue Gheude and entered the Brasserie Cantillon, near the Gare duMidi, a century-old brewery producing beer so ancient, soidiosyncratic, that it is often spoken of in the reverent tonesreserved for grand cru bordeaux and the rarest single malts.

The beer is called lambic, and the traditional sort has anappetizing dryness, an invigorating tartness, and a complexity thatrivals the finest sherry's; it's a beer boasting aromas suggestingeverything from lush fruit to mineral earth; a beer that makes yoususpect that everything else you know about beer is a lie. Greatlambic is the brewing world's Holy Grail, Cantillon its most sacredtemple.

A rarity today, lambic was once the defining drink of thePajottenland, a rich agricultural region southwest of Brussels onthe Senne River. Cast an eye on any of Brueghel's famous depictionsof Flemish celebrations, and you'll spy jugs of what is believed tobe the peasants' notorious "yellow beer" being consumed with greatrelish. In countryside cafés, you can still find thelocals-many of whom look as if they'd stepped out of themasterpiece known as Peasant Wedding Feast-enjoying lambic pouredfrom 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 appearunchanged from Brueghel's time. At Cantillon, as at all traditionallambic breweries, scant attention is paid to the rules of modernbeer making. Whereas other beers are fermented with carefullycontrolled yeast strains, lambics owe their fermentation to a wildparty of airborne microflora that includes more than 100 identifiedyeast strains and 50 kinds of bacteria. Since virtually everythingin the brewery is thought to have the microbiotic potential toaffect this spontaneous fermentation, there is a certain endearinggrubbiness to Cantillon. The air inside the brewery makes for anolfactory adventure, perfumed as it is with a musky potpourri ofdamp wood, wet grain, and a heady mix of barnyard aromas knowncollectively and affectionately as "horse blanket".

But lambic's unique microbiotic mix provides only part of thegreat beer's character. The winey, aggressively citric flavor oftraditional lambic is also influenced by its years of aging inwooden barrels, some of them decades old, arranged in shadowyracks. Astringent notes are added through the use of a largepercentage of unmalted wheat, along with the more typical maltedbarley. And in the case of the famed lambic called gueuze-producedby the méthode champenoise-like blending andbottle-refermenting of lambics at least one and up to three yearsold-the aging process plays a vital role in giving the beer anenormous complexity that makes it quite unlike any other.

Lambic's fiercest advocate is Cantillon's Jean-Pierre Van Roy.An affable grandfather with the physique of a man half his age, VanRoy is utterly unwavering in his commitment to traditional lambic.He refuses to sweeten his gueuze in order to tone down its naturaltartness, as is the practice at many commercially orientedbreweries. In a similarly purist vein, he uses only whole fruit inhis fruit-flavored lambics-never juices or syrups. In Cantillon'sfruit beers, pounds of cherries, raspberries, apricots, and evengrapes are added to the already two-year-old barrels of lambic tomacerate for as long as ten months. Then the renewed fermentationcontinues for at least three more months-sometimes even for severalyears. Van Roy declines to join the lambic brewers' associationbecause other members make sweetened beers in addition totraditional lambics. "Those other beers, they are not lambics," hesays with a shrug. "I would like them to make an association ofonly producers of real lambics, and I would join that, but I cannotjoin this group." The "other beers" Van Roy speaks of sodismissively are what most people think of when they hear "lambic".Sweetened with sugar or fruit juice and profoundly fruity inflavor, those brews, from brewers like Lindemans and Chapeau, havelittle in common with, say, the musty-dry, tart kriek (cherry) andframboise (raspberry) created by traditional methods.

Real or not, the sweetened lambics help pay the bills nearby inVlezenbeek at Lindemans, at least according to Roger Mussche, oneof the brewing world's leading microbiologists and a close friendof and consultant to the Lindemans family. Mussche does nothesitate to say that Lindemans's sole traditional lambic, a firmand flavorful gueuze called Cuvée René, is hisfavorite of the brewery's beers. But it is the fruit beers-younglambics blended with 25 to 28 percent pure fruit juice-that make upthe overwhelming majority of this country brewery's annual sales ofmore than 10 million bottles of beer. "If we could ask the sameprice as Champagne, we'd start producing all traditional lambicstomorrow," says Mussche. "But at over 32,000 hectoliters [ofproduction], the capital and space requirements would make itimpossible any other way."

For that reason, most traditional lambic producers run smalloperations, with outputs measured in the hundreds rather than thethousands of hectoliters. Some, like Hanssens Artisanaal, of Dworp,don't even brew the beer themselves. Instead, they buy it fromothers (the day it's made) and age it on the premises.

The practice of aging and blending lambics, requiring skillssimilar to those of an expert whisky blender, was once commonplaceacross the Pajottenland. For centuries, café owners and beerdistributors bought lambic from the brewers after it had beeninoculated by the wild yeasts but before fermentation truly tookhold, then fermented and aged the beer in their own barrels intheir own cellars. Since so much of a lambic's character comes fromaging and blending, those beers are considered to be creations ofthe cellar rather than of the brewing process.

Hanssens Artisanaal, only recently handed down from JeanHanssens to his daughter Sidy and her husband, John Matthys, is oneof the few blenders left in Belgium. Like the beers of Cantillon,the Hanssens lambics are the stuff of legend, particularly in theUnited States, where traditional lambics have won a small butgrowing contingent of aficionados. One Hanssens beer of particularnote is the kriek, which exemplifies how lambics fermented withwhole fruit differ from those flavored with juices. Rather than thesweetness of raw juice, the Hanssens beer displays the complexityof fruit skins, flesh, and pits that comes from the cherries'having been added whole to the barrel and fermented down to a pileof bare stones. This more intense fruitiness complements ratherthan overwhelms the dry, tart character of the lambic and makes thebeer well suited to main-course dishes based on beef (and onhorsemeat, much appreciated in Belgium), not just sweetdesserts.

Ten minutes from Hanssens, in the village of Beersel, ArmandDebelder grins when discussing his desire to make the transitionfrom blender to brewer. A former chef whose family has beenproducing lambics for two generations, Debelder, along with hisbrother Guido, inherited the 3 Fonteinen restaurant and its lambiccellars in the 1980s. Until recently the only place to sample thehouse lambics (the gueuze is now sold elsewhere in Belgium), therestaurant has long attracted beer enthusiasts from around theworld.

Debelder's love of traditional lambic pushed him to take thenext step. After years of discussion, he and his brother have nowseparated the company into two businesses, Guido assuming controlof the restaurant and Armand taking charge of the beer. Incooperation with the blender Van Vereweghe, located in nearbyGooik, Armand has installed a brewery at 3 Fonteinen.

The going has not been easy, Debelder says, and he is unsurewhether his brewery can survive on the production of traditionallambic beers. He cites the difficulty of selling tart, complexbeers in a world of sweet, simple lagers but reiterates that he'sdetermined to do it anyway.

As I leave 3 Fonteinen, Debelder stares deep into my eyes, hisface a portrait of pure emotion. "It is my one hope that thisbeautiful thing will survive," he says. "Because it would beterrible if future generations were not able to experience thismagnificent beer."

This article was first published in Saveur in Issue #57