DW

Stuart Howe at Sharps sent me a bottle of DW, which he had brewed in collaboration with the late Dave Wickett. I thought I’d drink it. I’ve had it when it was younger but this was older and had had time to settle. On the nose, a filmic contrast between a scowling, tough, dockyard dweller, neckerchief wearing, shoulder bulging, granite-like hardness Belgian and a Jean Genet type, implacably bald, beret-wearing, muscle-bound with a sailor hat atop: there is a  yeastiness, fruitiness, peachiness; a peach dessert sweetness on the nose; a dessert wine Muscat swipe on the nose, a dirty troll like dig into the hop sack on the nose; it is vinous, vine-like, Vinland-like, Varus vs the barley hordes, my big fat barley beer, the idea of the Rhine as a boundary between wine and beer;  sweetness, dessert wine London clubland, the femininity of Muscat. 

And so I drank it. Fatness, sweetness, dryness, sweetness I was only joking, smokiness, peachiness, round ripe peaches, the dryness of the mouth’s assault on the ripe skin of a peach, the release of juice, an RSM of hop bitterness bawling from across the parade ground to keep all things in order; the marmalade sweetness glides across the brioche like breadiness and big fat uncle Charlie — just about keeping himself in order — bawls along, saying all the wrong things, but we all know we love him. And it all ends as it should end: with a big alcoholic wave of papaya, pineapple, Billy Smart big top ring sawdust dryness and then a wonderful world tucks you into your bed.