Tucked into a corner building on the edge of downtown Morganton, North Carolina sits Fonta Flora Brewery. The brewery focuses on local agricultural ingredients in its beer, even foraging for them if necessary. The focus applies not only to the ingredients in its beverages, but also to the names of its offerings, with names such as Alpha vs. Beta Carotene for their carrot IPA. The outfit is still quite young (opening in late 2013), but it’s already making a name for itself across the US. In a little over two years since it opened, Fonta Flora earned two GABF gold medals: one for its Irish Table in 2014 and another for Beets, Rhymes and Life last year. We’re well aware of the quality brews the North Carolina brewery puts out, having named it to the Paste Best New Breweries of 2014 list.
Fonta Flora has done well in getting its beers out in central and western North Carolina, with regular brewery-only bottle releases for its more special brews. Among those brewery-only releases is a series of so-called Appalachian Wild Ales, which began with the wine barrel-aged Vestige Wither (with local fennel) and Vestige Bloom (with local kiwi) last year. The series has expanded since those first two offerings, incorporating different fruits in some of the more recent beers. One of those is Meemaw, a red wine barrel-aged sour with local wild cherries, Montmorency cherries and cherry wood.
Meemaw pours a reddish color, so you get a sense of what the beer was made with from the jump. This is something Fonta Flora does consistently with its agriculturally rooted approach. There’s a perfectly white head that fades immediately, leaving no trace of excess carbonation. The nose of the deep pink beer is a mixture of funk and cherry tartness, and I think I get the faintest hint of smoke as well. While the beer itself isn’t smoked, cherry wood was used during the process, which could explain the earthy aroma.