SAN DIEGO — This pretty lady will make you pucker. Ballast Point is kicking off a new Trade Street Collection with a barrel-aged version of award-winning sour, introducing a new White Wine Barrel-Aged Sour Wench available nationwide.
The innovative new brew is a seven percent-ABV ale with blackberries aged in chardonnay and sauvignon blanc barrels. After resting in both wine barrels for more than six months, White Wine Barrel-Aged Sour Wench emerges with aromas of freshly sliced white peach, citrus, woody oak tannins and rich vanilla. With every sip, beer drinkers will taste hints of crushed berries and ripe apricots with a buttery smoothness from the chardonnay barrels followed by a dry finish from the sauvignon cask. Easy-drinking for a barrel-aged beer, it’s tart, refreshing, and delightfully smooth.
Ballast Point Director of Barrel Aging Steve Anderson said the goal with the beer was to add complexity while maintaining the flavor profile of Sour Wench, which won a 2017 Silver medal in the nation’s largest beer festival and competition.
“With barrel aging, we’re giving tribute to three different attributes – the oak barrels, the wine that was in them before and the base beer,” said Anderson. “The blend that’s in the White Wine Barrel Aged Sour Wench bottles is a really nice layering of both the beer and the wine barrels, making it more complex and an amazing end product.”
White Wine Barrel-Aged Sour Wench, part of Ballast Point’s Trade Street Collection, is hitting shelves now in 12 oz four-pack bottles.
Trade Street Collection
White Wine Barrel-Aged Sour Wench marks the first release from Ballast Point’s Trade Street Collection. Named after the brewery’s barrel-aging cellar, the 80,000-square-foot Trade Street facility, the collection will feature quarterly releases and celebrates the deep and distinctive flavors of barrel-aged beers.
Additional Trade Street Collection releases will include Rye Barrel Aged Piper Down (limited release), which ages the brewery’s award-winning Scottish Ale in charred American oak High West rye barrels. This November, the brewery is bringing back the fan favorite High West Barrel Aged Victory at Sea and introducing Bourbon Barrel Aged Tongue Buckler (limited release), both to be released nationally.