Today isn’t just Monday. It isn’t even just a Monday. It’s Belgian National Day, the kind of calendar oddity that causes monks to raise chalices, constitutional scholars to toast to long-dead kings, and Americans to wonder, “Is that the one with waffles or beer?” (Answer: Yes.)
On July 21, 1831, a German prince named Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg swore allegiance to Belgium’s new constitution and became King Leopold I, a king of beer-loving people forged from revolution and stubborn charm. Since then, Belgians have marked this date with fireworks, fanfare, and a sensible number of Abbey ales. At Peaks & Pints, we’ll settle for the latter — an exquisitely curated Belgian beer flight, all from the venerated Merchant du Vin portfolio, running open to close, in addition to several Belgian delights on tap.
Founded in 1978 in the misty netherworld of Seattle, Merchant du Vin was the first U.S. importer to treat beer with the same reverence once reserved for French wine and oblique jazz. They were the first to put Lindemans Lambic, Orval’s wild funk, and Trappist mysticism into the hands of eager, unknowing Americans. Their mission was simple: import classic, authentic, family-owned European brewing institutions that had been fermenting before the U.S. had sidewalks. Today, they remain the shining goblet of old-world beer admiration in a land awash with hazy IPA fog. Let us now taste the revolution — one pour at a time.
Peaks & Pints Belgian National Day Beer Flight
Lindemans Kriek
3.5% ABV
Before TikTok, before Nirvana, before “imported” meant more than Heineken, there was Lindemans. Founded in 1822, this family brewery just outside Brussels introduced America to the concept of a cherry beer that wasn’t some syrupy malt catastrophe. This Kriek is a lambic — wild, untamed, fermented with airborne yeasts and aged with whole fresh cherries that trigger a third fermentation. It drinks like sparkling black cherry soda for adult humans: tart, spritzy, softly sweet, and brimming with the ghost of a dusty Belgian barn.
Orval Trappist Ale 2024
6.9% ABV
Born in 1931 at the Abbaye d’Orval and brewed with a trifecta of reverent chaos — original yeast, wild Brettanomyces, and bottle fermentation — Orval is the beer equivalent of Gregorian chant echoing through a citrus grove. Dry-hopped and sharp, fruity but feral, it tastes like no other. That’s by design. Orval only brews one beer, and they do it perfectly. It’s the beer that ruined monks for lagers and turned American brewers into romantic obsessives. Fun fact: their first brewmaster was Bavarian. Of course, he was.
Westmalle Dubbel
7% ABV
The Westmalle Abbey brewed their first beer in 1836 because, well, water was sketchy and monks get thirsty, too. Their Dubbel, however, didn’t debut until 1856, making it the original Belgian Dubbel and the benchmark ever since. Expect a deep, reddish pour, creamy froth, and an herbal, figgy richness with a dry cocoa finish. It’s as if your favorite dark chocolate bar had a mulled wine moment in a Trappist cloister.
Rochefort 6
9.2% ABV
The quiet contemplatives at the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint-Remy have brewed beer since the late 1500s, but only began commercial distribution in the 1950s. Rochefort 6 is the rarest of their trio — soft, earthy, laced with tea-like tannins and date-like fruitiness. Bottle-conditioned to a gentle effervescence, it whispers sweet musings of spice and caramel. This is the contemplative sibling in the Trappist lineup, the one reading Rilke and sipping in silence.
Rochefort 10
11.3% ABV
The 10 doesn’t whisper. It preaches. It slow-dances with figs and chocolate, sings with raisin liqueur and roasted barley, and lays down a velvet hammer of 11.3 percent without blinking. Built like a port wine but fermented like a beer, Rochefort 10 is a quadrupel of consequence. Think monkish alchemy meets culinary grandeur — brewed with two malts, two hops, and a secret sugar-steeped step that pushes it straight into myth.
Join us Monday, July 21, as Peaks & Pints becomes a temporary Trappist outpost, where flights of Belgian fancy replace your usual pint, and every sip is a minor revolution. Viva la Belgique. Viva la beer. Viva the Importer that made it all possible.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
