We were on our way home after deciding not to visit the Centre Pompidou-Metz, and suddenly realized that we were about to pass relatively close to the Rochefort Abbey, which I have blogged about visiting before, as part of a tour of abbeys for organ concerts and beer tastings back in March of 2010 (http://matthewzadow.blogspot.be/2010/03/abbeys-tour-in-ardennes.html). Maggie hadn't attended that tour, so we thought Rochefort would be good to see, but then I noticed that as we were approaching the southernmost parts of Belgium, Orval Abbey was also close by. This won out for our choice of
en route stopover, and we weren't disappointed.
Maggie spotted this old green Triumph convertible near the entrance, and we posted for a shot or two. Since we moved to Belgium she has become really interested in old cars, she says because the lack of road salt allows them to stay in use for much longer than they do in Canada, so they aren't 'beaters' but beautiful functional vehicles that people use on beautiful days.
We walked over to the monastery first and had a quick look around. All the online advice indicated that the tour of the Abbey ruins was well worth it, but it was getting to be past lunchtime, and so we decided to go first to the cafe L'Ange Gardien, 150 metres or so up the road, for a little food and some of the beer.
The standard Orval beer is available exclusively in bottles, and has an alcohol content of 6,2% which makes it a little light relative to the other Trappist beers. It was the second Trappist beer to be widely distributed, following the success of their fellow Trappist Abbey of Chimay. We have noticed recently that Orval has become very difficult to obtain in normal places in Belgium; unlike Westvleteren Trappist (of which I have written before) which is available only at the monastery, Orval is distributed commercially, but in very limited quantities, in order to keep the demand high. We see it very infrequently in the local Delhaize grocery, and when it does appear sales are limited to eight bottles per person.
At l'Ange Gardien, one can also purchase glasses of the biere pression Orval "green", or "petite Orval". This is a lighter beer than normal Orval, with an alcohol content of a substantially lighter 4,5% alcohol by volume, more like the beer that the monks themselves drink regularly. We had a little tasting platter of varieties of the locally produced cheese, and a couple of small salads. As well we discovered that one can order young Orval in the bottle, produced recently, or "aged" Orval, which has been lying down at cellar temperature for at least a year. We had a bottle of this aged Orval to share, to see how it tasted.
Orval is different from other beers in a few ways. First, unlike many Belgian beers, it is "dry hopped". This is an english technique, which you might have heard of, which involves immersing mesh bags filled with hops in the beer just after initial fermentation is complete, during the three-week maturation process. In other production methods the hops are boiled in with the malt much earlier in the process, which imparts a different taste; India pale ale for example is dry-hopped, which gives it that distinctive flavour. The yeast used for fermentation of each beer also imparts a specific flavour; in the case of Orval it is Brettanomyces lambicus, a wild yeast from this particular region that now is cultivated by the University of Leuven and supplied in quantity to the brewery. As well, after dry-hopping during maturation, additional sugar and another variety of yeast is added to allow for some additional fermentation and bottle-conditioning.
Since 1995, the quality control director of Orval has been Anne-Francoise Pypaert, and in 2013 she succeeded Jean-Marie Rock as Brewmaster of Orval, the first woman to hold the post of Brewmaster of a Trappist Brewery. Here's an interesting article about Anne-Francoise:
http://drinkbelgianbeer.com/breweries/meet-anne-francoise-pypaert-the-first-female-trappist-brewmaster
We made our way to the monastery and bought tickets. The brewery itself is not open to the public except on one weekend each autumn, but the ruins are able to be explored, and there are a ton of amazing exhibits that illustrate the brewing process and explain the history of this abbey.
Orval was founded in the twelfth century, but destroyed by fire in 1252, then rebuilt over the subsequent 100 years; then it was a relatively quiet place until the Thirty Years war, when it was pillaged and burned again in 1637. It became quite prosperous in the late 18th-century and an ambitious building scheme produced the large structures of the abbey (now visible only in drawings, maquettes or in ruins), but it was completed at last... But there was more bad luck for the Trappists: just as they were metaphorically cutting the red ribbon on the main entrance, the French revolution of 1793 brought French forces who burned it and dispersed the community.
It was a picturesque site visited mostly by artists looking for dramatic ruins as models for their drawings for the next hundred years or so, and was acquired by the Harenne family in the late 19th century, who then donated it back to the Cistercian order in 1926, so that they could re-establish a monastery there. It took 22 years to build the new abbey, and it wasn't completed until 1948. The Brewery opened in 1931 however, and it is clear that much of the money to rebuild the abbey came from the sale of beer.
The legend of the original founding of Orval is that the widowed Mathilde of Tuscany was visiting the site, and lost her wedding ring in the spring; she was horrified but prayed for its return, and a trout appeared on the surface of the water, bearing the ring in its mouth. She declared that the place was truly a
Val d'Or or golden valley, and provided the initial funds for the founding of the monastery. The trout and ring symbol is still seen on the labels of the bottles and glasses, and we saw the symbol in a number of places as we toured the museum exhibits scattered throughout the ruins.
Having toured a number of whisky distilleries in Scotland, and previous breweries in Belgium, we were no strangers to the basics of how malted barley gets turned into beverage alcohol. The process is much the same for beer as it is for whisky, but we found the exhibits entertaining nonetheless.
I was very happy to discover something that I was certain should have happened: that the Belgian crystalier Val Saint-Lambert had indeed produced a crystal beer chalice for a Trappist beer. I have since had a little look on ebay but so far have had no luck at acquiring one myself. That would indeed be a Belgian "grail" chalice if I could fine one...
A case of beer in Canada is sometimes referred to as a "square" but in the case of Orval it really used to be one: five-by-five wooden crates holding 25 bottles were the order of the day until recently.
We had a great time walking around the ruins, but they are so large and extensive that we sometimes had to stop and take a moment to rest... the abbey really must have been something grand back in the 18th-century.
We finished off our visit with a purchase of 24 bottles of Orval beer to take home, and some of the Orval Cheese. We will have some guests this summer so I suppose we will have to sample these together.
Next: end of the school year, vacationing in Ottignies
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