Rainy in the countryside. A beer is always a good choice. 🌧️🍺 The beer sounds quite innovative: a blend of Red Ales aged in red wine barrels with Japanese sansho pepper and yuzu peel. This seems to be 2018 vintage, that is before the world knew the Covid pandemic or war in Ukraine. Better times then! The beer wears a dark walnut wood brown veil. Carbonation is really shy, the bottle releases a meager sigh only when uncapped. I hope the beer is not flat. The emerging head barely covers the top and dies young. Too young. The scent is herbal and very much like a Wild Ale. I pick loads of wet oak barrel, dry red wine and a bit of wild yeast as if spontaneous fermented albeit it obviously isn't. The herbal segment resembles distantly herb liqueur. I can also recognize citrus in the scent, but not like zippy yuzu, rather like regular lemon zest. Neither do I find anything peppery in the olfactory supply. Let me see which components decide to step forward on the tastebuds. Well, first and foremost, I observe a potpourri of red wine, aged oak red wine barrel and bags of citruses. The red wine is intensive, dry, sour and medium-mature. Offers also purple grape. The barrel can't be overlooked, it's old and oaky for sure, and has absorbed volumes of red wine like a sponge. Now the citruses: indeed the level of zippiness rises sharply here. Now I can confidently say that yuzu zest and peel are present. It, though, does resemble lemon to a good extent. The malty side is interestingly timid, I'm trying hard to pick at least a pinch of bitter caramel malt somewhere but I fail. Probably the sour flavors dominate the package big time and overshadow any malt note. Herbs aren't there at all. Overall, the cocktail is indeed like a Wild Ale but not as wild as a Lambic. Uniqueness is a big plus 🤎🖤 but complexity is left somewhat midway. The body is medium, which is more than welcome! 👍🏻 The finish lifts the red wine and barrel nuances even more in the limelight, however, the citrusy element is still perky but more uniform than in the actual taste. I shouldn't forget purple grape either. Overall, the end is very much like the upfront flavor experience but just squeezed a little bit in a narrower space. The aftertaste is trying to come up with something natty with "Kagua" but exhausts the web without success and gives up after a while. The mouthfeel is medium-full, tart, puckering, dry and drying. Removes enamel from my teeth. It's also zippy, heavily vinous, a tad woody and amply barrel aged. This is straightforward. Layers and complexity aren't the strongest links of this brew. Nevertheless, this is innovative like I've said before. I like the description on the label saying that "we [= Cascade Brewing?] are not bound by stylistic guidelines, just our imagination and the ingredients we can access". That's the way it should be! Keep up the good work and don't follow the masses! 👍🏻👍🏻