Wallonia is the southern portion of Belgium, which includes the five French-speaking provinces of Hainaut, Namur, Wallonian Brabant, Liège, and Luxembourg. The Belgian province of Luxembourg is a separate entity from the neighboring Grand Duchy of the same name, which ceded from Belgium in 1839, only 8 years after the official founding of Belgium as an independent country, as part of the reorganization of Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic wars.
Historically, the concept of a Walloon region was based mostly on language. The Walloons speak a variant of French with strong Celtic influences, which are still noticeable in the rural parts of the region.
Historically, Wallonia is perhaps less prominent in the world of brewing than Flanders to the north or the lambic-brewing area around Brussels, yet there are distinct Wallonian beer styles that owe much of their character to the two main forces that shaped the region—agriculture and heavy industry.
Whereas the northern portion of Wallonia consists largely of undulating farmland, the southern portion is made up of the wooded hillsides and swooping valleys of the Ardennes. Between the two is a narrow strip of land, which was responsible, in the 19th century, for turning Belgium into the world’s second most powerful industrial economy after Great Britain. In its heyday the region’s power derived from the coalfields around Mons and Charleroi and the smelting plants and blast furnaces in and around Liège, with the Sambre and Meuse Rivers as transportation links.
In the Wallonian countryside, especially in northern Hainaut, between Enghien near Brussels and the ancient cathedral city of Tournai, the indigenous beer is the French-style bière de garde (stored beer), or the type known locally as saison (season). This is a shorthand reference to the brewing and fermenting of this farmhouse style during the cooler months of spring for drinking on hot summer days. Brewing the beer in springtime rather than summer reduced the chance of beer spoilage. Although the Wallonian saison bears some relationship to Flemish brewing, the link is only indirect; both brewing traditions resort to high hopping rates as a way to preserve beer.
An entirely different brewing tradition evolved in the industrial centers of Wallonia, where men who engaged in heavy manual labor sought quaffing beers that helped them slake their thirst after a hard day of toil. These beers were meant to provide plenty of nourishment, but relatively little alcohol. They were soft, light, and sweet, yet confusingly, they too came to be known as saison. Simpler, lighter beers are also tailor-made for brewing on an industrial scale and this spawned the success of such large brewing companies as Piedboeuf at Jupille- sur-Meuse, the eventual creator of Jupiler lager, and one of the founding firms of what eventually became Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer.
Farmhouse brewing, by contrast, has largely avoided the trend toward industrial brewing. Among the more successful small breweries of the region nowadays is the idyllically situated Dupont Brewery in the village of Tourpes, east of Tournai. Its Moinette brands of stronger ales and the iconic Saison Dupont have arguably foreseen and shaped the emerging tastes of a new generation of craft beer lovers worldwide. Using prodigiously high hopping rates, by Belgian standards, these beers have created a Belgian style of delicately spicy (although unspiced), bitter pale ales that are now influencing more recent craft brewers, who regard them as belonging to a distinctly southern Belgian style, in vivid contrast to the styles of the Flemish north.
The overt rivalry between southern and northern Belgian brewers has even drawn in the regional governments, which are keen to support entrepreneurial brewers interested in starting microbreweries in the region. During the first decade of the new millennium, therefore, some 40 new breweries appeared on the scene in the Hainaut and Luxembourg provinces. Several of these, such as Rulles, De Ranke, and Jandrain-Jandrenouille, are starting to gain international reputations.
Ironically, many of the brands that are most associated with the region, such as Leffe and Maredsous, are now physically brewed outside the region. The overall improved fortunes of Belgian brewers, however, have persuaded some established breweries to come out with bold new products. The commercially astute Lefèbvre Brewery, for instance, broke with tradition and now makes a sweet, spicy, heavy, and very hoppy beer called Hopus. Likewise, Dubuisson, whose Bush Beer barley wine is sold as Scaldis in many countries for local reasons, has branched out by producing smaller beers, some with alcohol by volume as low as 7%. The region is also home to the three Trappist breweries of Chimay, Rochefort, and Orval. Orval helps brewers throughout the province of Luxembourg by sharing its yeast with them.
To the world, “Belgian beer” often implies a single beer culture. But to the Belgians themselves, there are subtle differences between the Flemish and the Wallonian ways of brewing. Whereas the beers of Flanders seem more freewheeling and fearless, the beers of Wallonia, although not shy of experimentation, seem perhaps earthier and more grounded in tradition.