Gozo – Ivan Brincat

The story of Lord Chambray – Malta’s or rather Gozo’s first artisanal brewery

Malta, or should I say Gozo, has its first artisanal brewery with the opening in June of Lord Chambray at the Gozitana Agricultural Village in Xewkija.

While on a visit to Gozo, I went to meet Samuele d’Imperio, the managing director of Lord Chambray to discover why they set their eyes on making Malta’s first craft beer.

He told me the family had been visiting Gozo every summer for the past 25 years and it was always their dream to eventually buy a property with a view on Malta’s sister island. They finally bought a property in Fort Chambray around five years ago.

It has always been his parents’ dream to retire on the island of Gozo. His father, an accountant, is around five years away from retirement.

Samuele, also an accountant, fell in love with craft beers during a year working with Deloitte in Sydney. “We love Gozo and we wanted to do something for Malta and Gozo. But this is both my family’s and my first experience making beer.”

They are however in good hands. Samuele told me that after they dreamt about the idea, they contacted Andrea Bertola, an exceptional master Italian brewer who is helping the D’Imperio’s in this venture.

For those who do not know about Andrea Bertola, he is one of the first Italians to venture into craft beers and has had a large number of successes since his first venture in 2003.

We met him the first time last year and after discussing our project with him he immediately called back the next day saying he was joining our project.

Lord Chambray set up the company in September last year. They started work on the state-of-the-art brewery in January and started production in June of this year.

I ask what the ultimate aim of their venture is and whether they want to export their beer. “We have just started production in June, so far we have sold our beers in Gozo (an island of around 25,000 inhabitants though with a lot of tourists – both Maltese and foreign especially in the summer months) and we will shortly be selling the beers in Malta. We will take it from there,” he says.

However, he emphasised that his aim is to produce a biodynamic beer in Malta which would be a first for the country. He is also trying to see whether it would be possible to grow barley locally.

Lord Chambray’s concept is to get people to ‘drink different’. Our beer is unpasteurised unlike commercial beer that is pasteurised. We use the champagne method of brewing with maturation taking place in the tanks, following which sugar and yeast are added and a second fermentation takes place in the bottles in a temperature controlled environment. He has words of praise for Malta’s main beer Cisk and says this is a good commercial beer.

All the raw materials used by this craft brewery are guaranteed to have no GMOs and come from Belgium and the United States. “We get hops and barley from Belgium, hops from the United States as well as yeast from Belgium and Italy.”

Samuele says that they also want to give something back to the local community. The must which remains from the brewing process is given to local farms as pig feed or for fertiliser.

Samuele explained the brewing process to me. Water is an essential part of beer so they have top end technology being deployed to revitalise the water, which then goes through a sophisticated reverse osmosis plant.

Once the water is treated, the brewing process starts in kettles and vats. The beer is then moved manually to storage tanks were it is allowed to ferment for around 8 to 12 days. Yeast and sugar are added for maturation and the beer is allowed to rest again for another 18 days. Once it is bottled, the beer gets a second fermentation in the bottles. It rests for a further seven days before it is ready to leave the brewery.

Visitors in Malta and Gozo have a new beer to look forward to. In Gozo, you can also visit the brewery from Monday to Saturday.

For more information on the three beers made by Lord Chambray check my blogpost here.

Bottles fermenting before being ready for distribution

Lord Chambray – Malta’s first artisanal beer

Craft or artisanal beer has taken the beer scene by storm worldwide. Craft breweries are opening and beer lovers are slowly starting to move from the commercial beers to microbreweries.

Even in countries where beer does not have such a tradition, the rise of artisan beers has been astonishing. The concept of an artisanal beer is different and once you get accustomed to the taste it is not easy to return to a commercially brewed beer.

Living in Belgium means that I get to taste many great craft beers all with different flavours and styles. But it is also exciting to discover that this new trend has reached the country where I was born and lived for most of my life.

Malta is therefore following in this trend thanks to an Italian family, with a love for Gozo, who have invested money to launch the country’s first artisanal beers.

When I read about Lord Chambray a few weeks ago I knew that this was a very important development for Malta and Gozo particularly since Malta already has a tradition of brews, albeit commercial ones.

Over the past few years. the food and drink scene in Malta has developed beyond recognition. New wineries have emerged, olive oil producers are rekindling years long traditions that had since been lost and other innovative entrepreneurs have started a number of interesting enterprises.

Samuele d’Imperio, the managing director of Lord Chambray told me that his family from Novara have been visiting Gozo every year for the past 25 years. It had always been their dream to purchase a property on Malta’s sister island. It was something which they finally managed to do five years ago when they acquired a property at Fort Chambray. From then, it was following their dream of doing something different and of leaving an impact on a small island which they have come to love.

I came across their beer at a shop (Vini e Capricci) just next door to their brewery on the outskirts of Victoria Gozo in Xewkija in the Gozitano Agricultural Village. Vini e Capricci is another place well worth a visit when you are in Gozo, but that’s for another time.

I then discovered that the brewery was just around the corner so I visited Samuele d’Imperio to hear his story of how they set up the first artisanal beer in Malta. You can read about his story here.

The three beers have names of some of Malta’s most idyllic and popular beaches.

Blue Lagoon: This is a Blanche beer. It is an incredibly refreshing beer with hints of coriander and orange. Alcohol content for this beer is 4.6%. The beer is aptly named Blue Lagoon because this bay, in Malta’s third island of its archipelago Comino, has crystal clear waters and an incredible light blue colour.

Golden Bay: This is an American style craft beer. It is intensely golden with an alcohol content of 5%. It has a sweet taste and is brewed with hops imported from the United States with give some hints of citrus and caramel on the nose. Golden Bay is one of the most popular beaches in the North West part of Malta and is named like this because of its golden coloured natural sand.

San Blas: San Blas is a darker beer with an alcohol content of around 5.5%. It is brewed with a blend of hops to obtain a more aromatic flavour. Personally this was my favourite of the three beers given the complexity of its flavour. San Blas is a beautiful tiny bay on the island of Gozo which is located below the village of Nadur.

Tmun in Mgarr harbour, Gozo

Visiting a fishing port has a certain allure to it. Gozo’s fishing port of Mgarr is a small but picturesque harbour which is busy particularly in the summer months with the constant shuttling of visitors from the island of Malta for the period in mid-August around the feast of Santa Maria.

Mgarr harbour with its small passenger terminal is no longer just a fisherman’s harbour particularly since tourism on the island is an essential part of the island’s economy.

Nevertheless over the past years, it has become the venue of a number of interesting restaurants and bars just alongside the fishing boats many of which were out at sea.

One of the best restaurants on the island can be found here. It-Tmun rose to popularity in Xlendi, a sea-side resort on the other side of the island before it moved to Mgarr a few years ago. Tmun in Mgarr has gone from strength to strength.

Now this is a family which is renowned in the Maltese restaurant schene. Leli, the owner of the restaurant has been in this business since his return from Canada more than 20 years ago. His wife still does the early morning shopping and preparations in the kitchen while his son Paul works the magic in the kitchen making fantastic combinations, particularly with seafood though I have been told his 24 hour slow cooked pork belly is something rather special.

His other son, Patrick runs what used to be called It-Tmun Victoria but which has now changed name to Patrick’s. That is also another place worth visiting (in the Gozo capital of Victoria) though more formal with a particular attention given to the wine list which is one of the best in Malta and Gozo.

Nevertheless, I have missed going to Tmun in Mgarr for too many times on my visits to Malta and Gozo and it seemed as if this would again be the case particularly given the first night we tried to book, it was fully-booked from the morning.

But the second time we tried, we struck it lucky. And what a great evening that turned out to be.

We ordered a Hugel Riesling 2008 to start with and the kitchen first sent out a slow cooked cuttle-fish served on a small spoon. This was followed by another amuse-buche, a fresh tomato sauce which was full of intense flavour, given its the season when tomatoes are at their best.

This was followed by a mixed platter of fish which included raw carpaccio of tuna topped with white peaches, raw prawns, deep fried white bait, arancini of fish, octopus, a fresh fish soup known in Maltese as aljotta as well as a fish patty (pulpetta). All of these were divine.

For main courses, I opted for a rare tuna steak served on a pea puree while my friends chose a dott abjad (large local monkfish) served with a beurre blanc and mussels on a bed of cabbage. The tuna was cooked to perfection and worked incredibly well with the sweet pea puree that was served at the bottom.

The fish in the beurre blanc sauce, although not necessarily a Maltese way of preparing it was also exceptional with the right amount of acidity coming from the white wine added to the sauce.

The accompanying vegetables were simply prepared but cooked to perfection.

The main courses were accompanied by a Chateau Grand Mayne 2006.

The choice of dessert all looked splendid though by this time we had ate more than we could muster. However, we were tempted by Leli to try the ice-creams, all prepared in house. All flavours looked interesting. I opted for the white chocolate and salted carmel and the zabajone with Marsala. But were perfect.

Malta and Gozo have many good restaurants although it is also dotted with many tourist traps which are to be avoided like the summer midday sun. But what you should be looking for is consistency and the love for good ingredients which make all the difference particularly when simplicity and freshness are required. In this case, It-Tmun ticks all the boxes.

Verdict: Unmissable whether you are visiting Gozo just to eat at this place or staying for a few days on the island. The crossing to Gozo is 20 minutes by ferry so you can even go there just for lunch or dinner without needing a car (you just walk five minutes from the ferry terminal). The fish platter seems to have become his speciality as a starter but there were other many interesting options to choose from both for starters, main course and dessert which is always a great sign. Apologies for the quality of the photos of the food but that is one of the pleasures of dining al fresco. Unfortunately lighting was not good.

Tmun in Mgarr can be found at Martinu Garces Street in Mgarr. Gozo. It is open every day for lunch and dinner except on Tuesday’s.