Blanche de Chambly (5%)
For my first review of the year, I’m choosing the first beer I enjoyed in 2025, an old favourite I selected to accompany my late morning-early afternoon repast of smoked salmon, capers, rye crackers, and, in the absence of cream cheese, a dollop of high-fat sour cream. The pairing was, if not perfect, much more than merely satisfactory.
(If the salmon had been smokier and the sour cream had been a quality cream cheese, I probably would have opted for one of the several stouts I have in my fridge at present. But with the smoke factor relatively low, I thought a lighter touch was necessary.)
Blanche de Chambly has been around for a while now, launched in 1991 as the first release of the Québec brewery, Unibroue, back when it was still an independent. (Unibroue is, of course, now owned by Sapporo through its Canadian subsidiary, Sleeman Brewing & Malting.) It was the product of ex-hardware magnate André Dion after he took over the floundering Massawippi Brewing Company, in consultation with the late, great Belgian brewing legend, Pierre Celis.
The base recipe for Blanche was Dentergems Wit from the Belgian brewery, Riva, which itself floundered and was sold in 2002. (Interestingly, part of the purchasing group at the time was Gino Vantieghem, a former brewer at Unibroue.) But with Celis’ input, the beer became something entirely different, and while more headlines were made south of the border by Celis’ own Celis White, launched a little while later from his brewery in Austin, Texas, Blanche de Chambly because the standard-bearer of the style in Canada.
Today’s Blanche has changed little from the beer that made its mark in the ‘90s. The nose is still quite coriander-forward – coriander being a favourite brewing spice at Unibroue from the very beginning – with equal parts orange and lemon providing the citrusy counterpoint. The aroma is definitely drier from what I remember from the beer’s first couple of decades, and maybe even a bit more coriander-y than it was back then, but it remains enticingly perfumey.
On the palate, it seems a bit less spritely than it used to be, with a palate entrance that offers spice and grain, but little of the bright citrus notes that make the Belgian wheat beer style such a lovely first beer of the day. Citrus arrives on the mid-palate, but drier than I remember it and curiously more lemony than it is orange accented. There is also a (presumably coriander-derived) peppery character that grows through to the finish, which is, again, drier than I recall it being – although as a result also more quenching.
Overall, the changes observed above are but minor quibbles, with Blanche de Chambly still being, as it always has been, a stellar example of its style. Offhand, I can think of maybe a half-dozen or so blanches that I would prefer over this, but they are all mostly small batch beers either only available in Belgium or imported in very small amounts, or Allagash White. For a blanche that I can get on a regular basis, Blanche de Chambly is about as good as it gets.
89 ($2.95 - $3.90/473 ml)