No, I didn't take a side trip to Champagne while visiting Piedmont over the last ten days. So no, that's not a sample of wine drawn from the solera of Anselme Selosse you see in the picture at right. What it is (or was...), though, is something equally obscure and fascinating.What it is was just one of many highlights of a side visit I did take while in Piedmont, in the company of a couple of friends, to visit Birra Baladin in Piozzo. Yes, it was beer, a beer unlike any I'd tried before.
Baladin founder and brewmaster Teo Musso started his solera "experiment" (his word, not just mine) in 1996, when he intentionally left a batch of his then fledgling flagship brew, Super Baladin, in a loosely closed cask. Three years later, he bottled that beer after it had undergone a transformation usually associated with brown spirits rather than beer, mellowing in flavor and losing a good deal of its original alcohol via evaporation. That slow, slight oxidation took the beer's original 8.5% alcohol down to a whopping two percent.
Eleven years later, Teo opened a bottle to share with us. Was it mindblowingly complex? No. But it was amazingly fresh, delicate and, though oxidative in style, not at all oxidized in taste. It showed a kind of freshness akin to old Madeira, along with aromas of sandalwood and subtle dried fruits and spices.
I hope/plan to share more complete details of our visit with Teo at Baladin in the weeks to come. This was just too geeky not to break out now.
