Random question: A friend of mine is working on a trade that would send some Hill Farmstead in exchange for Zwanze 2012. I stepped in and said that I was pretty sure those bottles were never released and were only sold at the brewery for onsite consumption. Is he getting screwed here or were these bottles actually sold into the market?
They weren't released to the public, but I guess there are always a few bottles getting out in the wild, one way or another. For example, they are raffling out a bottle of Zwanze 2016 at the open brew day today.
There are plenty on the open market BUT you might want to have whoever has the bottle check the cork dates. There are at least two other bottlings of Cantillon rhubarb lambic from 2015 and 2016 being labeled and sold for onsite drinking as Zwanze 2012 or "Z12" handwritten; so he may not be getting one from 2012.
My experience at Cantillon was that the onsite bottles were opened there by staff at time of sale. Is that not true for everyone? Were these recorked?
