Invoking the Muse of Brews

This past Friday on a flight to an interview I was inspired to start a food/wine blog. I was reading an inflight magazine, addmittedly usually terrible, but there was this great article about a man's quest to try Westvleteren 12, the world's best and rarest beer. Despite the fact that I've read hundreds of such articles, this one somehow got me thinking about the idea of writing about food and food culture. So I thought I'd give it a try. I also decided that I would visit this abbey on my trip through Europe this summer. Hella cool. Anyway, back to the story:

Westvleteren 12 is only available at two locations: the Abbey where the monks produce it and In de Vrede cafe, both in Westvleteren, Belgium. Westvleteren is one of six Belgian producers of ale that can be titled trappists, after the monk order that produces them, and these beers have achieved high acclaim from beer enthusiasts across the globe. In 1945 Westvleteren decided to sell their beer in the current locations citing that their focus should be living as monks rather than as brewers, which I think is completely ridiculous. This beer is pretty much unanimously agreed to be the best beer in the world according to every site and critic I've found, and those greedy monks hold onto their resource like OPEC. Although I'm not huge on trappists, they are a tasty and interesting beer, especially with a meal. The rarity of Westvleteren also makes me wonder if that has any affect on people's opinion of it. If I had to trek through Belgium's countryside for 70 miles, I'd probably say any reputable beer was one of the best that I've had. So, the jury's still out.. we'll see when I'm standing in the halls of Saint Sixtus.

You can enjoy five brands of trappists in the United States, Westvleteren's three varieties will require a trip to that tiny town in Flemish Belgium. Here's my personal ranking of the producers who ship to the US, in descending order: Orval, Chimay,Westmalle, Rochefort and Achel. All of them are pretty damn good and I recommend them.

This blog is named after one of my favorite wines: rioja. I'm actually drinking a bottle of it now, which may comment on the expansive bounds of my creativity. Anyway, I've gotta run to Duke-UNC game. Hiram bought a 5.5 Liter bottle of Chimay Blue on his 21st birthday which we plan to open and serve to people around the bonfire. We'll pour some out for the trappists.

Addendum: We lost the game!!! The bottle sits in our fridge as a sad reminder. Now we're saving it for the NCAA tourney.