I am in the Pacific Northwest for the summer for work, and I figured if any place would have cantillion, it would be the northwest. Does anyone know of saplace to find bottles on the I-5 corridor ( Sacramento to Seattle area)? Thanks!
Unfortunately you figured wrong. All Cantillon hits the US at the Shelton facility in MA, and the east coast gets the bulk of it. You may have better luck in the Bay Area because apparently the west coast Shelton rep is "involved" with someone who owns a bar down there, but Oregon hasn't seen bottles since September 2013.
Bier Stein's annual tower of sour is this Friday. Among other things, they'll have this on tap: Cantillon – St. Gilloise Gueuze I'm much more interested in the keg of Peche n brett and fantasia, but for those who love the sort of nasty, sour, barnyard aroma and flavor one can only get with Cantillon Gueuze, come help yourself.
I remember watching the KPTV morning news a while back (perhaps it was before 9/13 but I thought it was more recent than that) and they had one of their roaming reporters at some market in Portland where the beer guy there was going over the selection and started talking about some of the special beers they carry, then pulled out a bottle of Cantillon. I didn't catch the name of the market and it didn't look familiar from what I saw. Anyone have an idea of where this might have been? I know it's vague but there couldn't have been too many non-bottle shops that got Cantillon. The guy mentioned it being something they only put one bottle of out at a time but it was just sitting in the refrigerator case - not behind a counter or anything.
Seattle's last shipment of Cantillon was 6-8 weeks ago now and it lasted a few hours. No clue when we'll get more. British Columbia used to be a good place to find a couple bottles, but no more.
I miss the days when it was easy to find around here ... but it was still pricy enough that I didn't pull the trigger often.
Oh how things change. Kriek, RdG used to be shelf turds and you had a week or two to pick up the special stuff. Lots of good BC beer, though, so it's never a waste of time to shop for beer up North.
As others have noted, Cantillon shipment arrived in WA about 7 weeks ago, really small allocation and it sold out within 12 hours or so. I haven't seen any in Vancouver either FWIW.
It is an unfortunate thing the the NW sees so little of what Shelton brings into the States. People are buying so much Cantillon even at the brewery that they are running low on Lambic, they lowered their take-away limits and won't be making Mamouche this year. I know that Cantillon has the name and the heritage but Tilquin bottles are something that hang around quite frequently on shelves. IMO their Classic Gueuze is as good if not better than Cantillon's. Don't just pass them by, their 2011-2012 version is perfection right now. Enjoy the PNW
