Château Aro, a dark rubescent ale, conditioned on freshly crushed pinot noir juice and skins, then aged in French oak barrels - all from award winning Escarpment Winery. This very special ‘solera’ release blends together 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 vintages, creating a beer of near unparalleled complexity and depth.

This beer contains over 10% of the total mass as Pinot juice plus it is rested on the skins for quite a lot of contact time. The aim was to extract tannins and then toss it into Escarpment Pinot barrels. It has created a very mellow and integrated beer which resembles full blown Pinot experience. Grape Harvest Beers celebrate that grapes are our local crop. There was too much interest in fresh hop beers after the first hopstock so after that we thought let's do something different. First we had the idea of a Pinot Pilsner (this became Rose de la Vallee). It started by talking to wineries, and the beer has to be timed very accurately. A big, strong ale, aged French oak barrels from Escarpment...Gorgeous. The Garage itself has featured in a few of our labels. Here it cheekily takes the place of the grand chateau surrounded by vines that you’d normally find on a bottle of Bordeaux. I love the way Tomas, managed to make it look so classy, which if you’ve ever visited Aro, you’ll know it isn’t. As we developed the ‘Grape Harvest’ series, it was a natural decision to work with Tomas again. Inspired by the ‘Vins de Garage’ movement from France, we struck on the idea of planting our own Garage right in the midst of an old Chateau, steeped in history with wrought iron gates and all the trappings of a Cru wine label. This was our first label to work with proper gold foil and the result was a striking mixture of high and low brow for a beer brewed with Pinot grapes and skins and aged in French oak for 12 months.

Art by: Tomas Cottle

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