My wife got me addicted to those La Croix sparkling waters. They have no calories, no sugar. They’re like drinking air. The main tasting note is “carbonation.” There’s always some natural fruit flavoring in the drink, but it’s faint. You have to search for it. It’s all very fancy, I assure you.
New Belgium’s Le Terroir is a little bit like those La Croix sparkling waters. There is some fruity sweetness hidden in the depths of this beer, but it’s buried deep under such intense tart and sour notes, you have to go digging for it. Le Terroir is a term borrowed from the wine industry, referring to the soil that the grapes of a particular bottle are grown in. Fancy, right? New Belgium chose an appropriate name because this is a fancy beer—a complex sour with a bit of funk on the nose, plenty of puckering sour notes on the palate along with some faint peach sweetness. It’s light on the tongue with a slight peppery finish. The beer was dry hopped with Amarillo and Galaxy hops and aged in big ass foeders for three years. Let the beer warm a bit in your glass, and the hop profile comes forward while the sour, lemon notes mellow out, allowing the malty sweetness to shine.
Overall, this beer is refreshing as hell. If you like sours, seek our Le Terroir. If you don’t like sours, seek out Le Terroir and drink it until you like sours. Seriously, this is something you should do to further your education in beer. Some of craft brewing’s most interesting innovation is taking place in the realm of sours. Brewers are putting tons of resources into their barrel programs and funky yeast stocks, and they’re coming up with sours that are far more complex than just “sour.” Le Terroir is a great example of what’s going on in the brave new world of sours. And because New Belgium’s distribution is robust, you can find this beer at any decent bottle shop for a decent price, making it a safe and easy entry into sours.
