By Shuli Stone
...That’s why we drink it here.
Or so the Heartford Dillard Hartford song goes. But maybe those southern pickers were off a bit. Maybe it was Benjamin Franklin who was right when he said, “Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.” Whichever it is, the Monk’s at Saint Sixtus Abbay, in the miniscule Belgian town of Westvleteren, are bringing religion and beer together in the most beatific and awe inspiring ways. If you are looking for a little taste of heaven, the Holy Grail of beer, look no further than the Saint Sixtus Abbay, and fill that grail with nothing other than Westvleteren12.
It was a pilgrimage for me—but a crazy idea to most. Rent a car in Paris, drive three hours in a foreign country in a foreign car to pick up some beer, and then drive it three hours back, bottles a-rattling, and make sure to get back to Paris before Avis closes. Wait, why? For what? Could the beer be that good? How could this possibly be worth all the effort? Oh yeah, and by the way, what the hell are you going to do with all that beer once you get it? You live in America. Despite the completely rational and obvious objections to such curious endeavor, the Amram family was intrigued enough to indulge me; so, just like that, off we went. Martha and Shuli, cruising toward what is commonly said to be the world’s best and rarest of beers, on the first leg of a long journey that would start late at night in a room in Los Angeles, take us to Paris, send us to Belgium, and drop us off right back where we started--in the City of Angels.
There are 7 official Trappist beers in the world today, six in Belgium and one in the Netherlands. These beers are all produced at their respective abbeys and by the monks themselves. They adhere to strict code of beer brewing methods established in the middle ages. Most of these beers at this point have distributorship, most are available if you look hard enough, and all are delicious in their own way. All together they comprise some of the most famous beers in the world. If you get the chance, have a Chimay, try an Orval, enjoy an Achel, or any of the others. If for no other reason than, according to Trappist code, the proceeds of the beer sales must go to charitable work. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you to run out and try a Westvleteren beer. Long ago the monks at Saint Sixtus Abbay decided that they would rather not change their lifestyle by working with outside distributers and shipping to other places in Europe or outside the continent. They did not want to compromise the quality or the ingredients of their beer for profit. They are much more content to continue to brew the beer in the secret way they have for over a hundred years, and sell it on a very small scale to those who can drive and pick it up directly from them.
But, as Aurelle and I found out, it’s not just that easy…
Since even before I turned twenty-one (a silly American rule) beer has-been a passion of mine. At first, I thought beer was great because you could throw Ping-Pong balls into it, get really drunk, and hopefully end up making out with a girl. Nothing wrong with that, per say, but soon I discovered, there was a whole world in that stuff that did not see when I was just using it as a vessel for ping-pong balls or fodder for a funnel. Through small levels of curiosity and exploration I started to see that there was so much more than the adjunct ingredients in the Budweisers and Natural Lights that we were drinking, so much more than the watery consistency and non-existent flavors of mass produced beers. There were worlds of tastes and flavor profiles, subtleties, and varieties that are endless—powerful masterstrokes of artists who have turned their talents to the craftwork of this ancient drink. These different beers are supported by robust local and enthusiastic communities and are steeped in human history. The art of brewing beer, god willing will never be perfected, but humanity has been trying for thousands of years getting closer and deliciously closer at every step. Every beer tells a story about its makers and the place it was made. Every ounce reflects something in the brewer’s personality, his or her trials, tribulations, accomplishments, and almost unwaveringly, her dreams. Though it may sound over the top, to me, every beer is a universe. So once I knew I would be visiting Aurelle in Paris, I wanted to see if I could be one of the few to make it to Westvleteren in the neighboring country of Belgium and taste their story.
Westvleteren12 (the name of their most famous beer, the 12representing how many weeks the beer is conditioned before bottling and the alcohol content as it is just under 12%) is almost a myth in the states. A shadow. A whisper. On the beer blogs and fan sites, it is consistently rated as the best beer in the world, A+, perfect10, and thousands of comments tell stories of how they may have gotten their hands on a bottle in the states. Some stories seem true, others, just imagination. So I googled the abbey, determined to see what was necessary to get my hands on a bottle. The abbey website, simple, unassuming, perhaps even a bit off-putting, tells you to not bother calling the brewery, no one will pick up the phone. Don’t dropsy, no one will answer and you will not be served a friendly beer as away ward traveler. There are two-hour windows for you to call hotline to reserve a 15min window of time to pick up between one and three crates of the latest batch they have brewed. They brew in cycles, the 6, the 8, then the 12. You don’t get an appointment for the 6 and try to walk away with the 12, they don’t have any to give you. And if you are going to call the hotline in the two-hour window, getting through and actually securing a reservation is, “a matter of having a lot of patience as well as a lot of luck.” Whoa…
So Aurelle and I devised the best semblance of a plan we could. We looked at the schedule they post online and saw that there was reservation window coming for the 8. It’s not the 12, but still regarded as one of the ten best beers in the world, and what the heckling had never tried either! Aurelle would get up early and be ready by9am her time to repeatedly call the brewery from her French phone and try and get through while working on some schoolwork. Then, if by some miracle she got through, we would pray for an availability that would work with the itinerary of our trip.
The evening (USA time) of the phone reservations arrives. I anxiously and excitedly finish my dinner after work, take care of some emails, odds and ends, and get in to bed to sleep away the night that would bring forth the mornings tidings. I close my eyes, I try to calm the mind, I begin to slip ever so slightly into slumber when, suddenly, aloud ring startles me back to full consciousness. My heart skips abet. It was my phone, right next to my head, with an incoming text. Who would text me at 12:15am on a work night? The incoming number was from, “999-99.” What the? The message read, “enhc phone either, it says the phone number is currently available. I’m going keep trying. Maybe they didn’t turn on their phones yet? Aurelle” Okay, it’s Aurelle, but what the hell is she saying? Obviously there is trouble afoot. I get out of bed and we meet on gchat. Skype won’t work for her to call and her French phone won’t work either for some reason. Her efforts were valiant, worthy of honor; yet, we had not even come close. If it were going to happen, I would have to make some type of last-ditch effort myself. Unaware of how to call out of the country to Belgium on my cell phone, I once again reached out to Google for advice. Given pause on how much it would cost me without an international calling plan, I continued on—I dialed the numbers.
Call cannot be completed as dialed.
Damnit! I tried again. Call cannot be completed as dialed. Grrr! I waited a minute or two more and got ready to give up. I tried again.
A strange sounding busy signal.
Hope! Could this be possible? Could I actually get through and make an appointment? Wait, reception is so bad in my apartment. What if it drops the call? And, crap, my phone is running out of batteries. Have to plug it in to the wall and call from the floor. I dial again.
Call cannot be completed as dialed.
Argh! Thwarted once again! I put the phone down. I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for a few moments. I consider my options. I consider how early I have to be up in the morning and how much work I have to do before the trip. One more try, just one, then, stop being ridiculous. I roll back to the floor dial the numbers one last time and click “call.”
A pause. A European ring. A voice. High pitched, friendly and kind, the voice of a monk—the voice of a freaking late night beer-wish-granting angel!! The call didn’t drop. The man spoke English. And some days later, we found ourselves in that little European car heading toward the Promised Land, trying not to be late for our reservation.
Nestled as the last of a series of tiny one road towns fifty miles from the French channel port of Calais and only ten miles from Poperinge; the hop capital of Belgium (part of the secret of their success?), it is not an easy town to find, but that it is a beautiful drive is undeniable. Red and green dotted landscaped speckled with silos, sheep and the occasional ruin or stone structure from an age long past.
We got lost.
From one little town to the next, signage is almost non-existent. Why would they use signage? The people who live in these towns have lived there all their lives, they know where to go. Visitors are rare, to say the least. We stopped to ask directions from a man replacing a telephone pole. He spoke no English. When I pointed to the address on a sheet of paper he got a look of fear in his eyes far worse than my own. His face said, “I will give you the best directions I can without the help of language, but there is no way you are finding this place, you are better off turning around and going home.” But he was nice enough, and he at least confirmed that we were driving in the correct general direction. We asked another person a few towns later. Her face told us the same thing as her telephone pole-working counterpart; her directions once again confirmed our general correctness of route.
We turned around over and over, we doubled back, we switched strategies. We used whatever clues the roads and buildings would lend us. We followed signals of a place that would be frequented on a day beer was being sold. And right on time, we turned on to a small dirt path that opened up to a rather surprisingly grand and modern abbey. The Abbay of Saint Sixtus in the town of Westvleteren.
We parked and walked to what appeared to be a welcome center, or at least the most central place where we could ask questions. We opened the doors and we were immediately hit with the sounds of clinking glasses, happy chatter, and the smell of deep malty ales. We had not expected this. It was a bustling restaurant and gift shop attached to the abbey and open on days of pickup. They serve cheeses made by the monks, a select lunch menu, and, of course, all three beers! My heart jumped at the chance to try the beers, Martha’s heart jumped at the chance to sit and have a meal and perhaps a beer before driving another three hours back to Paris. We went to the counter and told the lady of our reservation. But she had no clue what I was talking about. Scared for a second, but undeterred, we realized we were not at the actual abbey and would have to walk around the corner. We saw the little driveway and window where people were picking up their beer, we gave our reservation, and like that, two crates, forty-eight bottles of Westvleteren8 were in my possession…unbelievable. We didit! What do we do now..?
We went to the restaurant.
We ate cheese and bread and we ordered an 8 and 12. We wanted to taste what we had picked up and we wanted to taste the best of the best. Martha started with the 8, myself with the 12. I looked at the frothy heads poured right to the edge of the goblets. Thick and rich like out of a movie. As if some burly knight were about to slam down at the seat next to me, slosh his beer on the table, and bite into a giant turkey leg. But I looked around. Only pleasant, overweight Belgians with surprisingly strange matching tight haircuts, and smiles with slight glazes of happy beer drinking over their eyes. I picked up my mug, Martha followed suit. Here we go, this was the moment. Cheers.
In the second it took to get the beer from the table to my lips, I had my own doubts. They crept all over me like bugs. We drove all this way, went through all this rigmarole, there are so many incredible beers out there, so many in my backyard of LA, how can it be worth such effort just for one variety, one recipe?
And then I sipped.
Immediately the buttery, almost creamy texture filled my mouth confidently, but not aggressively. It wrapped itself around my tongue and along my cheeks. I kept it there for a moment to let the flavors open up—and layer after layer they did. My eyes bulged as I realized I was experiencing something I had never quite had in a beer before. Layer after layer of taste kept unraveling. Honey, sweet raisin, roasted chestnuts, fresh grapes, yet there was nothing cloying in the all the sweet flavors. There was a balance of earthiness from the hops, a whisper of grass notes so perfectly balanced. A thin tightrope walk that held the complex yet volatile structure together—as if one more bud of hop would tip it over to being too earthy, one less, and the sweetness would overpower. You expect it to fall to one side or the other, to teeter-totter at least, because that is what every beer before has done on some level. Not this one, it never wavered, it holds the line and it sings itself to something existential—something truly unique, something truly special, something sacred, something that only religious and faithful folk could make, something that should always be rare—because it has to be.
And then the swallow. It left me with the most delicate little taste of leather that satisfied me and left me in the blissful waiting room of my next sip.
The 8 is a formidable beer in its own right, not to be trifled with, but I will spare you the entire review. Martha thoroughly enjoyed her sip of the 8 and was already convinced, though she thought she never would be, that the trip was worth it. Then she tried a sip from my 12.
“That’s the best beer I have ever had,” she said. She looked into space, trying to come to terms with what she just experienced, “wow.”She was almost emotional, and we are talking about a sip of beer here.
So we drank and we ate. Like any beer worth its salt it pulled old friends and mentors into a moment of time where conversation is fast, joy is present among any bit of sadness, and satisfaction makes way for all the thoughts of life.
Afterward, we paid our bill knowing we had had our fill, but were instantly overcome with a sadness of knowledge, like the fruit from the tree in the Garden of Eden, we knew this place existed and that we may never be back, and if we were, it would not be for a long time. But, to our delight, the gift shop sold gift boxes that include one bottle of 12. So we bought a few for friends and family, one for Aurelle, and were heartened by the site of 48 bottles of Westvleteren8standing proudly in the back of our little rental.
Victorious, we drove back to Paris and met back up with Aurelle. She tried her bottle of the 12 and shared with her friend Anne. They had similar out of body experiences. Ask them about it, their eyes won’t lie.
Most of the journey of the beer was over. We stored the crates of beer in the bathroom of the hotel where it was nice and cool until it was time to pack them up. We bought a second suitcase just for the beer and Aurelle and I spent an afternoon bubble wrapping each bottle and packing them meticulously for the long journey to the states. The bags were heavy, travel back was a bit difficult and we lost three beers along the way, brave soldiers who sacrificed themselves for the survival of the many. And so, sitting here now on the same floor where I made a phone call to a small abbey in Belgium a few weeks ago, sits 45 bottles of Westvleteren8 and a few of the 12.
Life is about .001% different now, generally speaking. As if, on that journey and through that beer, through sharing it with the right company, at the right time, in the right place, we stumbled upon some ethereal and briefly attainable connection to another world. Perhaps, when any of us take a sip of that beer, for a fleeting moment we know what those holy monks know, that in heaven beer flows freely for those willing to appreciate it, and the beer is from the town of Westvleteren and crafted by the hands of the monks of Saint Sixtus Abbay.
