Dupont Avec Les Bon Voeux

If you were ever to think to yourself, I really want to know what the Saison style should taste like, ten out of ten beer snobs/aficionados/enthusiasts ought to immediately pipe up “Dupont Saison”. Or “Saison Dupont”. It’s kind of strange that way. At any rate, Brasserie Dupont creates some of the best beers of this style you’ll find, no matter if you are visiting Dupont’s native Belgium or anywhere else in the world.

Saisons get grouped under “farmhouse”-style ales, fermented with an ale yeast at rather high temperatures, causing just a wealth of complex esters and phenols — the compounds we perceive as various spices, fruits and so forth. Dupont adds nothing besides their house yeast to the wort, and what results is a lineup of world-class beers.

Avec Les Bons Voeux, or “Best Wishes”, is brewed for the holiday season. It’s also considerably stronger than its forefather, as a wintertime seasonal, and because of its relative rarity, commands a bit of a higher price tag. But is it worth it?

The cork in this bottle of Avec Les Bons Voeux gives with an immensely satisfying pop, not followed (fortunately) by a gush of beer out the neck. I can barely pour the beer carefully enough; it’s so active from the bottle that it overflows my glass with foam, a cream-colored, meringue consistency sitting atop the hazy orange-gold saison settling into the glass. It’s not thick with yeast, but the bottle-conditioned nature of this beer lends itself to not pouring particularly bright and clear.

Indistinct spicy notes pepper the nose, including, well, peppercorn, something akin to grains of paradise, a certain malt graininess, and a grassy quality. There’s just an abundance of interesting aromas competing for time here, all contributing to hiding any whisper of the 9.5% alcohol by volume present in this beer. Oh, I’m celebrating now, all right.

My first sips are met with a lot of the same perceptions, dominated by pepper and hay. There’s a touch of other phenols, like a bit of clove and even woodiness. There’s really no fruit to speak of in this beer, and it’s far from rough. The hops do manage to contribute a light bitterness on the edges, and this bitterness continues through the entire taste into the finish, drying my throat considerably and forcing, yes forcing me, to take another taste. Oh, the humanity!

As the beer warms, there’s a certain sweetness that comes out, a light sugary sweetness but by no means cloying or cotton-candy gross. The effervescence understandably renders the mouthfeel a little on the thin side, prickly, and at no time malt-dominated. It’s all about the yeast doing what it does best.

Basically, if you’ve never tasted Dupont’s flagship Saison. I urge you to find a bottle at virtually any decent beer store (and plenty of not-so-great ones). From there, if that’s a taste you enjoy, Avec Les Bons Voeux is even better. Scout’s honor. It’s got a depth of character that I really haven’t found in many other saisons.

This bottle was procured at the Whole Foods on Houston, for $12, I believe. It’s a 750ml bottle, and frankly, it’s worth every penny. Should you not be able to find this beer — it’s typically on shelves year-round, and a year or two of age does not hurt it, as the cork in the picture above attests — your fallback is the regular Saison, or in a pinch, Dupont’s Foret, an organic saison. If you have not explored the Dupont brewery, well, now’s your chance!