Mattina Rossa
Allagash Brewing Company

Mattina RossaMattina Rossa
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From:
Allagash Brewing Company
 
Maine, United States
Style:
Wild Ale
Ranked #66
ABV:
6.6%
Score:
97
Ranked #788
Avg:
4.36 | pDev: 7.34%
Reviews:
81
Ratings:
475
Status:
Active
Rated:
Jan 07, 2024
Added:
Aug 25, 2011
Wants:
  91
Gots:
  104
Mattina Rossa is a beer that was a long time in the making. It was brewed in August of 2008 with a base of 2-Row malt and 440 lbs of local raspberries in the mash. It was then conservatively hopped with Tettanang, German Tradition and Saaz and fermented with our house yeast strain. Shortly after primary fermentation, the beer was racked into eleven red wine barrels, nine of which were inoculated with either Lactobacillus or Brettanomyces "Allagensis". After one year, we placed an additional 100 lbs of local raspberries in five of the barrels. The beer continued to age for an additional year, at which time the barrels were blended to strike the desired balance of fruit and funk.
Recent ratings and reviews. | Log in to view more ratings + sorting options.
Ratings by jwat:
Photo of jwat
Rated by jwat from Pennsylvania

4.75/5  rDev +8.9%
look: 4.75 | smell: 4.75 | taste: 4.75 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.75

Aug 17, 2015
More User Ratings:
Photo of ovaltine
Reviewed by ovaltine from Indiana

4.5/5  rDev +3.2%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5
Pours a cloudy golden brown color with raspberry hues and a soapy white head that quickly dances away. The nose is funky and fruity, with the Brett and raspberries shining through, along with a nice pomegranate as well. Wow.

The taste is strikingly - dare I say puckeringly - tart, with loads of tart raspberries, pomegranate, and the lemon referenced on the bottle. If you don’t like exceedingly tart wild ales, this beer is not for you, but I do love the tartness, so this is perfect for me.

The mouthfeel is light and effervescent, on point for the style. This beer is a treasure, IMHO, and an excellent example of the style - but it is TART.
Jan 07, 2024
 
Rated: 4.5 by LAM01833 from Massachusetts

Jul 31, 2022
Photo of tide
Reviewed by tide from California

4.75/5  rDev +8.9%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.75 | taste: 5 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.75
Smells like raspberry jam, fresh boiled sweet corn, maple syrup, cream brûlée and fresh oak. Wow, what a nice fruity and sweet smell! It’s dark beige to brown color. There’s coarse foam for seconds, and then it only shows submerged bubbles on surface of glass. It’s medium body, a bit sticky like juice. The beer is very tart, like a lemon’s acidity. This is a very flavorful sour ale, which is the type I like (say Russian River brewing’s supplication). I can sense strong tart raspberry, pomegranate juice, lightly funky balsamic glaze, a touch of salt, caramel candy, dried apricot, tart Cherry pie, wild jujube juice aromas. This recalls the practice of preserving tart fresh fruit with sugar, making jam for the rest of a year. This sour ale definitely shows that, I get the maple syrup like thick and even lightly caramelized sugar diffused into raspberries. And the almost as strong as vinegar acidity unleash a vivid naughty fresh fruits’s youthful soul. It’s a very nice sour ale, worth this long wait. It’s interesting that the beer actually tastes like wild (tart) jujube juice which used to be popular in the city I grow up. The beer shows some residual sugar, which balance the tart when it gets warmer. But I do like the sharper tartness when it’s colder, because if you give it some time to flow around in mouth you also pick up those complex fruits aromas. We can also think it’s wine like, a tart wine if it is a wine, it does have the fruitiness, jammy, bloody but not very smoky or tobacco like. So it’s probably a Merlot in that sense. The weather is so comfortable right now, no smoky air around, so I really enjoy this well deserved master piece. Sep 26 is Zwanze day, I never get a chance to enjoy it in person. But have a nice sour (although this is not natural yeast but an ale, but close enough) and time to taste it are so nice. The aftertaste is actually a bit peppery, like some mushrooms which you may eat, but those earthy peppery seems common in our nature’s wild yeast (fungi technically are not yeast). Oh, now I want to have a Rodenbach Grand Cru! This is definitely more fruity, but it also shares the wine spirit like a Flanders’ red.
Sep 27, 2020
 
Rated: 4.25 by XmnwildX12 from Minnesota

Feb 29, 2020
 
Rated: 4.71 by Duncian from Pennsylvania

Aug 08, 2019
Photo of GuyFawkes
Reviewed by GuyFawkes from Illinois

3.67/5  rDev -15.8%
look: 3.75 | smell: 3.5 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.75
Bottled 2/26/16; drank 6/24/15 @ California Split.

Orange rust appearance.

Minimal white head; minimal lace.

Tart raspberry jam notes in the nose.

Medium mouthfeel.

Bitingly tart strawberry flavor up front; soda carbonation on the finish. Nice fruit notes but a bit punishing on the tartness scale
May 13, 2019
 
Rated: 4.5 by BeerRay from Rhode Island

May 01, 2019
Photo of darktronica
Reviewed by darktronica from Indiana

4.32/5  rDev -0.9%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.25
One of my favourite raspberry beers, Mattina Rossa strikes the perfect balance between brett funk, red wine character from the barrel treatment, and fruited sweetness.
Mar 11, 2019
Photo of jheimbigner
Reviewed by jheimbigner from Washington

4.23/5  rDev -3%
look: 3.75 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4
Bottled Dec 15, 2016
Consumed Jan 26, 2019

L - peachy rose like fairly clear. White head that quickly dissapates.
S - this is the bomb diggity. Raspberry pie, very jammy. Reminds me a lot of Rodenbach. Acidic in the background. Minimal lemon and minerality.
T - initial taste of light raspberries followed by acidity, minerality, lemon. It is acidic, but not as intense as some have said in my opinion. I had this batch fresh and think somehow the acidity is more mellow now.
F - light carb, easy drinking.
O - good raspberry wild and Allagash wilds are fantastic, but do not think this is in the same class as their coolship beers.
Jan 27, 2019
Photo of LeRose
Reviewed by LeRose from Massachusetts

4.09/5  rDev -6.2%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 4
This is a 2016 vintage bottle. It pours with a superb clarity. Golden red in color with no appreciable head.

Smells raspberry, vinegar...hmmm, maybe raspberry balsamic vinegar. Plenty of it on the nose. A bit of funk, a little lemony, red wine. Kind of a jammy sweetness. Interesting.

The taste is bracingly sour early in the glass. Probably won't peel paint, but certainly delivers a slap. Almost the intensity of sour Skittles, I reckon. Sharp, clean sour. The raspberry...at this point not a fresh raspberry flavor, tending toward wine-like with jam sweetness. There is an acetic note that flies by quick. Red wine comes through in the finish and as the beer warms up, it becomes less...I dunno...startling? Either I am adjusting or temperature is doing the Vulcan flavor meld here. Likely both. The funk is pretty restrained and essentially plays a minor role in the flavor.

Minimally carbonated, yet it feels a little tingly. While there is some sticky raspberry jam feel, the finish is acidic and clean. Quite dry.

Liking this quite well, but it took a bit for it to grow on me and for me to understand it. If you don't like raspberry, pass on this one
Dec 27, 2018
 
Rated: 4.54 by jvillefan from California

Sep 03, 2018
 
Rated: 4.38 by Bubbawilly88 from California

Aug 20, 2018
Photo of WOLFGANG
Rated by WOLFGANG from South Carolina

4.54/5  rDev +4.1%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.75 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.5
BOD 121516
Aug 12, 2018
 
Rated: 4.48 by RichD from Rhode Island

Jun 30, 2018
Photo of angrybabboon
Reviewed by angrybabboon from Massachusetts

4.31/5  rDev -1.1%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25
Consumed 4/1/18

A: Pink orange with some golden hues - some clarity - pours with a small, white head, fades to virtually nothing but retains a small collar, leaves some small spots of lacing

S: Bright, juicy raspberries and acid - tart, fleshy raspberries, like smelling a bowl full of raspberries - sharp sourness with some acid, some lemon - other fruity notes, like cherry - some funky, lightly musty notes, but they are really overpowered by the bright acidity, which I think works quite well - notes of red wine - some barrel, but with the funk, it's really second stage to the raspberry

T: Imagine biting into a super-tart, sour raspberry, and you've mostly captured the taste of this beer - so, so much raspberry - raspberry flesh and juice - some sour cherry and a spritz of lemon acidity - very sharp sourness - some funky notes, Brett funk, and barrel funk, but the highlight is the acidic aspect - some red wine, dark fruit - complex layers of sharp fruit and funk - some light sweetness at the base, some pale grains - edit: the acidity gets fatiguing, even with a 12 oz pour, almost becomes too much

M: Medium body, low carbonation, sharp and acidic

O: If you don't like raspberries, move along

I had this at a BA fest years ago, and it the people pouring explained that the beer wasn't ready yet. But it was stellar. And this is also stellar. I'd say this is on the same tier as the Allagash coolship beers, but it's so sour that it's almost hard to drink.
Apr 02, 2018
 
Rated: 4.21 by byronic from Canada (ON)

Mar 20, 2018
 
Rated: 4.49 by Zonian1 from Ohio

Feb 24, 2018
 
Rated: 4.42 by Pearlstreetbrewingco from Florida

Feb 24, 2018
 
Rated: 4.23 by Jerk_Store from Canada (QC)

Jan 26, 2018
Mattina Rossa from Allagash Brewing Company
Beer rating: 97 out of 100 with 475 ratings