Big, Big Tart

Big life happenings deserve the “bottle service” treatment. Anniversaries. Graduations. Restaurant openings… Fridays?
This week, the official Hot Knives toastmasters contingent was invited to take part in just such a ‘cheers’ ritual: fancy, tableside bottle popping to celebrate the opening of a restaurant, for which one of our associates had developed the bar’s beer list and tap system. His on-tap list was supreme — Moylan’s Harvest, Dry Hopped Old Guardian, don’t get us wrong — but the bottles inspired ‘oohs,’ ‘ahhs’ and the unmistakable whoosh of digital cameras whipping from purses.
Which is a to say that Brasserie Cantillon’s Lou Pepe Kriek is a great memory cementation device. A Kodak moment in a 750-ml bottle.
Poured into traditional lambic flutes (those frilly mini-Pilsner glasses with gold rim that seem like they belong to the German answer to ‘tea time’) this kriek was the luscious color of freshly juiced raspberries muddled through a cheesecloth and spritzed with Seltzer. The nose was like a crème brulee-topped lemon tart… okay, that’s actually what we’re eating alongside it, but c’mon a dessert pairing like that makes so much sense! Absent from this kind of kriek is any sort of ‘wild cherry’ sweetener. The front of the taste is a smooth, sparkly pucker and the back is more of the same amplified on different buds — a savory, yeast-on-citrus lozenge drip. And unlike some animal-style lambics that get crazy with the Geuze-whiz (we dig that too of course) this classy lady packs just a latent, background funk (think back-up soul singers hardly noticeable in the mix of a good rock song).
At only 5 percent alcohol-by-volume, squirreling away a bottle of Lou Pepe for that monumental occasion probably makes little sense. You want to toast with this relatively quick. Though we wondered if saving it for a year would really be so bad? The waiting would be hard. In fact, we’re tempted to have babies or open restaurants just to drink more.
Dairy Pairy: English Lemon Curd
Soundtrack: U2’s “Lemon”