Brasserie Dupont Avec les Bons Voeux

The name simply means "With the best wishes from the brewery Dupont". Originally it was given as a gift by the brewery to their best clients, but with its popularity they decided to commercially sell the beer. It's an unfiltered light beer, in the same style as the famous Saison Dupont, but brewed in restricted quantities. The brewery is still independent and family run.

This beer poured a cloudy golden brown, with some floating white sediment appearing in the glass. There was also a huge rocky off-white head that had amazing retention. Lacing was left all over the glass from the beer.

The smell was somewhat bitter, with a touch of skunk apparent in the nose at first, but really not in an unpleasant way. There was a huge wildness to the smell, grassy, earthy, with some wild flowers mixed in. Spice comes through a bit as well, but it's mostly the smell of wild Belgian yeast. There's always this amazingly natural and wild smell to saisons that I just can't get enough of.

The taste just overwhelms the mouth with the very definition of a wild beer. It's like Ommegeddon mixed with Duvel. There was banana and wild flowers present in the taste. It just had this raw quality to it that's hard to describe. It's really not all that sweet tasting, but rather a nice grassy hop bitterness coats the tongue. Normally I wouldn't like a hop dominated flavor but this beer pulls it off so well. It's just wild and untamed. It's a bit tart tasting, but just amazing.

The beer is light in body, with strong tingling carbonation. It even feels good in the mouth. There's a bit of smooth coating left on the teeth, and some warming when it went down the throat. Overall the feel is just light and a bit airy.

Wow. This was an insanely easy beer to drink. I think saisons may be at the top of my favorite styles, and this is definitely the best I've had yet. It even beat out Ommegeddon, which was one of my favorite beers. It's hard to believe that something this good is only rated #4 on Beer Advocate, but I haven't had any of the ones rated higher yet. It's also pretty hard to believe that this beer was 9.5% ABV, since it barely had any indication of the level of alcohol in it. I don't think beer gets much better than this.

- Adam