Mid-week tipple: A Belgian beer and an inexpensive Shiraz

Saison Dupont

6.5%

We move outside the country this week to Belgium, home to so many of the world's greatest beers. Dupont is a small family-run brewery as well as a farm, that now produces bread and cheese as well for sale in their café/shop. The farm part of the business goes back to the mid 18^th century. Beer production started a few years later, brewed mainly to quench the thirst of busy farm hands. The original Saison beer was fermented in the winter for drinking later in the year. Often the beer began a secondary fermentation in the barrel as temperatures rose; nowadays carbonation takes place in the bottle. Until recently the bottles came with a champagne-style mushroom cork and wire. Saison almost died out in the twentieth century until beer nuts in the U.S. began to take an interest. Today it is made in most beer-loving loving countries, including our own.

Saison Dupont is one of the most highly rated beers in the world, with a distinctive character said to derive from a unique group of yeasts used in brewing.  It is medium-bodied and complex with refreshing  fruit, a light bready, yeastiness, and a thirst-quenching bitterness. Great beer.

16 Stops Shiraz, McLaren Vale Shiraz

14%

€13.99

When was the last time you had an inexpensive Shiraz from down under? At one stage it was all we drank in this country, but it seemed to go out of fashion (or get more expensive) over the last five years. Happily I can report that I have tasted a large number of very decent, well-priced Aussie Shiraz  (Shirazes?) in the last month or so. None better than the 16 Stops; made from a blend of fruit from various parts of the McLaren Vale and the Adelaide Hills, it is a medium-bodied, vibrant fruity little number at a very tasty price. Available at a huge number of off-licences and independent wine shops around Dublin and the rest of the country. The Chardonnay is well worth checking out too.