Flanders Ave Red is the latest in Wild Rose’s barrel-aged series – a Flanders Red Ale, which spent an unspecified amount of quality time in red wine barrels. So named via a pun on the access road off of Crowchild Trail in Calgary that leads one to the brewery, I presume.

This 750ml bottle pours a clear, medium orange-brick amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and yet somewhat fizzy off-white head, which leaves a few instances of rearing sea-monster lace around the glass as it gently recedes.

It smells of semi-sour raspberry and cherry fruit, bready caramel malt, a bit of earthy yeast, some weak red wine barrel notes – musty dark vinous wood and vanilla, mostly – a softly acidic lactic character, and some very tame weedy, herbal hops. The taste is bready, doughy caramel malt, tart black berry fruit, a headier oaked red wine acerbity, robust and weirdly friendly yeast, a further milky sourness, some middling sharp lemon citrus, and a weak, indistinct earthy bitterness.  The carbonation is pleasantly engaging in its arms-length frothiness, the body on the low side of a typical middleweight, and plainly smooth, with the emphasis on the banal meaning of the former. It finishes off-dry, the kind of languishing malt thankful that the various sour players – wood, yeast, and fruit alike – seem to be packing ‘er in as well.

I gotta say, this comes off as a decently rendered Flanders Red Ale – the red wine barrel treatment hard to parse amongst the enjoyable mixed fruity sourness, but I suppose that’s what one might call ‘blended’, and I mean that with absolutely no cynicism. Easy to drink, and a sign of more good things to come from this nascent program at Wild Rose.