Vielle Rouge
Bale Breaker Brewing Company

Bottle Date: 9/4/20
Palate Contaminants: other beer

The color is... I don't know, raspberry juice? Guava juice? It's a light red that shades toward purple or yellow. Points for a new color, I guess. Not much carbonation, and no lacing.

The smell is a sour with a fruit puree. Red table grapes account for a good part of it, and berries and rhubarb are well represented, too. I'd call it slightly perfume-like, too.

The taste has way more punch than the smell. I'd say the canvas is some cross of rhubarb and apple, and the berry sweetness floats on top of it, never really mixing well. There's not a whole lot of the usual sour characteristics in the taste. I didn't notice the alcohol up front, but there's definitely ethanol flavor on the back end. There's another flavor that's like damp wool, and there's more of it than I'd like.

The aftertaste is the apple and wool, and it's dry. Coarse carbonation, not prickly, and not a lot of it. There's a pungent characteristic that I'm struggling to not call "sour" because that brings other things to mind in the beer world, but it might be on its way to becoming vinegar. It's still easily palatable and pretty decent as a standalone beverage, though.

amazing to get to drink this one and the blanc edition just days apart, thanks to my friend for saving these for my visit. its so cool bale breaker is doing this kind of beer now, what a fun project, and these are as well executed as everything else they do, spendy but worth it, really unique. this one is done with malbec grapes and aged in red wine barrels, a bit stronger than the blanc, stained pinkish reddish, hazy in the glass, lively head from the bottle, very excited to get into this one. it smells bretty, vinous, and woody, all expected after the blanc, maybe a little more maturity to this, like the brett is way more funky in the nose, and there is less immediate sharpness from the grapes and any tannins there, and from any bacterial elements at play, this is more funk than sour, still has some saison yeast character to me too, and hints at black pepper, vanilla, and cherry on top of the wine grapes. the alcohol is also present, but its not a distraction, it just slows me down enough to fully appreciate all i am smelling. the flavor is great, remarkably fruit forward, woody too of course, but i get cranberry and raspberry and tart cherry along with the malbec, which has some skinny tang here thats nice with the fermentation profile. i get some other farmy elements too, straw and hay, wet animal, and as refined as this is, it also seems super rustic and old worldy to me. a bit of strong port wine, earthy wheat malt, and an almost mulling spice thing as it warms. overall this is wonderful, fermentation forward, pretty wild, and gorgeously fruity from the malbec, super well integrated. i might prefer the blanc slightly, but both of these are divine, and probably set up well for extended cellaring. a whole new side of bale breaker, i loved these!