Twelve beers of Christmas: #4

Our guests have gone, there are only a few hours of the old year left and I'm ready for another beer. What better way to see out 2008 with the only ten-year-old beer in my cellar - a bottle of J W Lees Harvest Ale.

I picked up a stack of these a couple of years ago, no idea where from. They seemed like a good idea at the time, but became the beers that I never really wanted to break open (my inherent beer guilt). But I can only manage one more beer tonight, so there's a certain romanticism about rounding out the year with a ten-year-old beer.

It poured like a good scotch, a deep smooth amber that had weight to it - like an oily single malt does. There was fiery alcohol escaping, fumes pent up for a decade and rollicking rampant as they were released. There's a body segueing from deep tea brown to ruby red at the base, a whirl brings a tight light beige head, leaveing sticky legs down the snifter. A fresh Christmas cake dough scent is suddenly swamped by alcohol that I can feel in the back of my throat- it actually makes me blink.

Watching the head dissipate into a galaxial swirl, a moire pattern collapses into no more than a mere tea stain on an unbuffed mahogany desk. Seemingly I can't tire of playing with this beer. To the lips, then. Here be black treacle, candy sugar, brandy, thick fresh caramel, a carbonation pinpricking and just the most amazing sustained sweetness.

That was all half an hour ago. Now, the head has left and so has any underlying alcohol harshness. Instead, there's a placid glass of dark sherry and light spices. There's still tight alcohol that you can actually inhale into beneath your eyelids if you sniff hard enough. The complexity has unwound, the code broken, malt and hops: sweet.

I have no more ten-year-old beers left in the cellar. Just a nine-year-old. And an eight-year-old. And those beers are - J W Lees Harvest Ale 1999 and 2000. They'll be the taste of Christmases to come.