Nectar of the Gods

Sometimes separating hype from reality is difficult. The red velvet rope phenomenon is real and can be measured, so it tends to make me a bit of a cynic when I hear the “best in the world” tag applied to anything. As a commercially minded capitalist however, I can appreciate any slick piece of marketing that I encounter. Who would have thought it would be practiced by a bunch of monks?

Westvleteren 12 is an AWESOME beer. No doubt about it. When you do something for a few hundred years, you apparently get pretty good at it and the monks from Sint Sixtus are no exception. Still, there is a measure of Belgian absurdity to obtaining this nectar of the gods. The monks have gone Big Time and have embraced technology to keep their beer exclusive. They accept calls only within predefined windows of time that are published on their website. http://www.sintsixtus.be/eng/brouwerijactueel.htm

You then call and receive a busy signal for an indeterminate amount of time. For She Who Must Be Obeyed it was about an hour. They then take your order for whatever brand they are selling in that time window. The Blond, the Bruin 8 or the Holy Grail Bruin 12. The Bruin 12 has won best beer in the world several times. She Who Must Be Obeyed was calling for the Bruin 12. When you finally get through, they take your order for one case. Not Two. Not Three. One. You also agree not to resell the beer. They then ask for your license plate number for when you pick it up.

Pick up for us was about a two-hour drive through the Belgian countryside. We passed lots of farmland, poppy-filled Flanders Fields including Ypres, and a couple of windmills. The abbey of Sint Sixtus is at the end of an impossibly narrow, windy road, which deposits you at the abbey itself. Across the street is a little restaurant that acts as the Abbey’s visitor’s center. Here you can sample all three of the beers and purchase up to four bottles (2 Blond, 1 Bruin 8 and 1 Bruin12 with a glass). Good luck getting that through airport security. SWMBO and I stopped in the restaurant for a quick bio break and a not so quick lunch including a blond and a Bruin 8. Refreshed and ready to move on, we got back in the car and drove into the pick up line at the Abbey. Here you wait in your car for the monk to check your license plate number. If you pass muster, he rolls up with a fresh crate of 24 bottles to put in your trunk. You then pay and cannot purchase another case of beer until the following month. They have your phone and license plate on file - electronically, so don’t even try. (Unless of course you have another phone and another car.) Unfortunately, we have two phones, but only one car.

So, what did we get? Well we had a nice drive through the countryside. We came home with 26 bottles of Westvleteren Bruin 12 (“Best beer in the world”), two bottles of the Bruin 8, four Blonds and 2 glasses. Oh, and a new respect for the power of the red velvet rope.