Last week Carlsberg launched Vintage 3 in Denmark. It is the third and final edition of the world’s most exclusive beer trilogy – a trilogy that unifies first-class beer brewing with innovative art. Under the leadership of Jacobsen Brewery’s brewmaster, Morten Ibsen, six Carlsberg brewers from Norway, France, Great Britain and Denmark dedicated themselves to developing and brewing Carlsberg’s ambitious beer trilogy.
Meanwhile, three artists – Kaspar Bonnén and two selected artists from the project Radiant Copenhagen – joined forces to create six unique labels that point to the future and tell the story of what Carlsberg City may look like someday.
The basic recipe for Vintage 3 was developed in Copenhagen; it was then further developed at Kronenbourg Innovation Centre in France and is now the only currently available beer to be aged in French Côte d’Or oak barrels in J.C. Jacobsen’s original cellar from 1847. The beer has a wealth of deep oak, vanilla and nutty aromas from the barrel aging, combined with sweet fruits from the fermentation. Vintage 3’s alcohol content is around 15 percent, which is solely produced through natural fermentation and without added enzymes or surplus alcohol from the barrel, as is the case with other beers that have such a high alcohol content.
The artists, who also include Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum, made Carlsberg City the centre of fictive narratives on the labels, which take place in a distant future or a past that never happened. One label shows The Carlsberg Tower from 1914, an ambitious construction project that J.C. Jacobsen never realised before his death, while the label “The Carlsberg Dome” depicts a dome erected over Carlsberg City in the year 2047 to separate it from the surrounding slum.
In designing the labels, the artists used maps that are significantly more detailed than those available on the internet. These included maps from COWI A/S, one of the world’s leading suppliers of detailed digital aerial photos and maps.
The price of the beer is DKK 2010 for 37 cl.