A good year (Fuller's Vintage Ale)

Jeff Evans attends a tasting of the Fuller’s Vintage Ales, 1997-2006

I love the phrase “vertical tasting.” There’s something laughably paradoxical about it. Brewers like to use it when presenting beers of different vintages, so you can see how a brew has matured from year to year. Such beers tend to be rather strong, so vertical is the last adjective I’d choose to describe such a session. It was with a suppressed chuckle therefore that I gratefully accepted an invitation to taste 10 years of Fuller’s Vintage Ale.

Vintage Ale is a bottle-conditioned version of Fuller’s pasteurised barley wine, Golden Pride.

I’ve sampled the two 8.5% ABV beers side by side on a number of occasions and, while I admire the full, rich flavours of Golden Pride, I’m always swept off my feet by the complexity and easy-drinking nature of Vintage Ale.

It’s a brilliant example of natural conditioning in the bottle.

This was obviously something Fuller’s recognised when it launched Vintage Ale in 1997. Golden Pride had been available in cask in some pubs, so the lighter, airier, fresher taste of a living version had been noted. Furthermore, there had been some success at Fuller’s with the launch of 1845, a bottle-conditioned beer for the brewery’s 150th anniversary in 1995. The brewers knew they could produce reliable living beers in a bottle. What’s more they really wanted to do this.

As head brewer John Keeling explains, all too often brewing these days is akin to working in a factory. The regular daily production is one thing – it’s the lifeblood of the business – .....

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By Jeff Evans

Section : Spotlight

Page number : 32