Tonight the founders of Vanberg and DeWulf, Don Feinberg & Wendy Littlefield, will be hosting a tasting of their artisanal Belgian beers at Belmont Station. I have been following Vanberg and DeWulf recent endeavors with interest because they have introduced no fewer than three new lambic products to the United States and innovating while doing so.

For starters, they have introduced the traditional lambic blender De Cam to the United States, which, to my knowledge, completes the project to have all major traditional lambic producers and blenders available in the United States. At least as exciting is that the first De Cam product available in the US is a bottled unblended lambic, De Cam’s Oude Lambiek. There is no lambic style that provides such a great insight into the “terroir” of a lambic brewer or blender than a straight lambic.

Their most innovative lambic product to date is undoubtedly Lambrucha, an accomplished low-alcohol blend of lambic and the fermented tea Kombucha (review here). One of the additional virtues of Lambrucha is that it involved De Troch. De Troch is a beautiful old Belgian lambic brewery but much of its capacity is used to brew sweetened lambics for the national market. Hopefully, Feinberg and Littlefield can induce de Troch to do more traditional products or get some of their straight lambic for the US market.

One of their more mysterious releases is LAMBICKX. During a recent event at Belmont Station, one of their representatives noted that this beer cannot be classified as a Gueuze. A look at the bottle reveals the reason for this. The label shows only one brew year (a 2009 brew year and a 2011 bottle year on my bottle), which indicates that this is a blend of two year old lambic, which would put this beer in the same league as Cantillon’s Lou Pepe releases. I tasted this beer over the holidays and I recall this blend having a smooth and relatively young character. This release has a very nice label, too.