Brandy Mount Barley Wine
The Flowerpots Brewery / The Flowerpots Inn

(Notes of 11/07/09) Purchased at the Bottled Beer Stall of 2009 Southampton Beerfest. in late May 2009; bottle-conditioned, packaged in a slim brown 275ml bottle, served cool in Hapkin's bulb-shaped sniffer. NOTE: the ingredients include Munich, Pale and Crystal malts, Bavarian smoked malts, Sovereign hops, and raisins - very intriguing. Also, this beer was first brewed for Christmas 2008 in its cask-conditioned version, but now also available in this bottle-conditioned one.

A: the colour is very dark for a barley wine, lightly murky dark amber to russet, coming with a slowly dissipating off-white froth and fine but constant streams of carbonation.
S: quite sweet and semi-alcoholic even, featuring densely sweet overripe plums, raisins and apples upfront; a good swirl brings up a really enticing mixture of malts, as of honey, smoked malts, crystal pale malts, goose-berry-ish refreshing fruitiness, and a touch of coconut-like sweetness.
T: this is a delicious, unconventional take on English Barley Wine... the lightly effervescent and smooth foretaste shows overripe pears and juicy crystal malts with a faint touch of biscuits and a woody edge like a well-aged ruby port, turning soothingly smoky, chocolaty, sweet walnutty, prune-ish and smoked-raisiny in the very end (a bit like an old piece of chocolate-flavoured fruit cake), with a little support from powdery/chewy herbal hop bitterness from presumably the Sovereign hops. The mixed malts are definitely the main theme here (why not, since this is a barley wine), while hops seem to fare a bit too light to be able to help result in a balance overall.
M&D: lively yet soothing on the carbonation, rendering a pretty smooth and fresh palate; the body is full but not heavy, overall quite drinkable. Given some unusual ingredients, this is by far the most interesting English barley wine I've tried. The bottle-conditioning technique adopted as shown in this bottle is already quite mature, which shall go from strength to strength I sincerely hope!