Credit: Bob Townsend
Credit: Bob Townsend
Though it's called the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival , beer has become a big part of the annual May showcase of Southern eating, drinking and learning.
Southern craft breweries, including Back Forty, Creature Comforts, Max Lager’s, Oskar Blues, Service, Sierra Nevada, Starr Hill and Sweetwater will be pouring in the festival’s tasting tents.
Brewers from Cigar City, Service, Terrapin, Unknown, Wicked Weed and more will on hand during three days of classes. And for the second year, the food and wine festival will have its own craft beer.
Tripel Reserve, a Belgian-style tripel fermented with oak and red wine, was specially designed and brewed for the 2014 festival at Three Taverns Brewery in Decatur in collaboration with Atlanta’s Wrecking Bar Brewpub.
In 2015, Cuvee du Gamalle, a hoppy session sour with some of the qualities of a crisp white wine, will be the festival beer. It was brewed at Max Lager's in Atlanta in a collaboration with Tampa's Cigar City .
Max Lager’s brewmaster John Roberts and Cigar City’s head brewer Wayne Wambles developed the recipe, which features an interesting blend of malts and some exciting, fruit-forward hops, including Azacca, Huell Melon and Lemon Drop.
Roberts and Wambles, who both have roots in Alabama, have known each other since 2001, when Wambles came to Atlanta to work for the now-defunct Buckhead Brewery chain.
Since then, Wambles’ Cigar City signature beers, including Jai Alai IPA and Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, have gained national acclaim. And Roberts’ beers have won multiple awards, including a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival for Max Lager’s Imperial Mocha Oatmeal Stout.
The pair’s first collaboration together was Black Ash, a smoky black lager brewed at Cigar City.
“Doing collaborations, it’s always fun to learn something from the other brewer, or see something done a different way,” Roberts said. “But with Wayne, we think a lot alike, so it’s more about creating something new.”
“When we’re moving through the creative process, we’re almost always on the same page,” Wambles agreed.
With Cuvee du Gamalle, Roberts and Wambles decided to take on several different brewing trends, including sour, lower alcohol, and bright, hoppy beers with tropical fruit flavors.
“I think the idea was to make a session beer that had as much flavor and complexity as we could possibly add,” Wambles said.
“We were also thinking about the audience at the festival,” Roberts said. “It was less about doing a sour beer than doing something a little more like a wine in terms of acidity. We were looking for tropical flavors along the lines of a sauvignon blanc.
"To continue the Food & Wine theme, the name Cuvee du Gamelle was chosen to not only show the collaboration but the coming together of food and wine. One of the translations for 'Gamelle' is a 'community bowl' that would serve many people."
“If everything falls together in the right way, what you’re going to experience in this beer will be so tropical and so juicy that you will swear that we put fresh fruit in it,” said Wambles.
EVENT PREVIEW
2015 Atlanta Food & Wine Festival. May 28-31. $45-$2,000. Midtown. 404-474-7330.
John Roberts and Wayne Wambles will be participating in two class sessions: The Art Of Collaboration at 1:30 p.m. on May 29; Southern Sours at 1 p.m. on May 30.
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