Saint Mars of The Desert: Lovely Saint Winefride (England: Barley Wine: 8.3% ABV)
Visual: Pale, lightly hazy apricot skin color body. Moderate sized yellow white creamy head.
Nose: Gentle cereals. Gentle citrus. Mixed grain cheerios. Light brown sugar. Lemon sherbet.
Body: Brown sugar. Golden syrup cake. Lemon sherbet. Slightly earthy bitterness. Bready. Crushed Blackpool rock. Lightly peppery.
Finish: Apricot syrup. Crushed Blackpool rock. Multigrain cheerios. Light turmeric. Brown bread.
Conclusion: Hmm, interesting, this manages to feel like what may be the rarest thing, an actually well balanced barley wine. To contextualise you see many types of barley wines, rough as a badger’s arsehole boozy shit, smooth as can be no rough edges USA like take on the style, super hoppy tasty but why is it a barley wine takes, rough edged gems that make up some of my favorite examples of the style, and then this. This feels like just a touch of each take, minus the shit one.
Its aroma was more muted than I expected, so I wasn’t sure what I was in for. So I leaned in for my first sip and ….
Big sweetness, yet not rough. The alcohol is there, but it is at the edges. It feels closer to the smooth USA take, but restrained in how much it smoothed things out. Sweet, rough edges, but very manageable.
There is a lot of fruitiness from hops, more than I often expect from UK hops but not unheard of, though there is not a really evident general hop character. Leaning definitely more on malt and residual sugars with very evident brown sugar, golden syrup and crushed Blackpool rock notes – however there is just a touch of the earthy bitterness and pepperyness showing the more expected UK hops notes.
All very balanced, everything in its place. Not one of my favorite barley wines, guess I like things that poke the extremes a bit more, but definitely this is the most everything in its place in the right qualities barley wine I have seen and that is cool. Deffo worth a drink.
Background: For some reason you don’t seem to see many Barley Wines these days. Never were the most common style, but seems even less now. So, when Saint Mars Of The Desert, which has slowly been growing in how much I respect their beer, and have a lot of trust from me now, drop a barley wine I was interested. They mention on the label that, odd for them, this is all about the British ingredients. Kent hops, maris otter malt and English yeast strain. Sounded well worth a try. Also usually for SMOD it is bottled rather than canned. Don’t know much about the saint, botttle says “Someone cut off her head, but she didn’t let that stop her” ..which ok, I need to look that up some day, sounds like some Green Knight shit. Anyway, grabbed from indie spirit. I maybe should have gone for some bright, haunting, music of beauty to match its saint imagery. I instead listened to Discharge: Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing. Sorry! Big beer big music, I don’t make the guidelines!*
*Ok,ok, I do, also I frequently change them.
