Good Libations columnist Gordon Kendall

• Gordon Kendall's column, "Good Libations," runs monthly in Extra. He welcomes readers' questions and comments about wine, beer or spirits.

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When I was a kid, I greatly enjoyed the movie "The Love Bug."

The star of the movie was Herbie, a meek-looking Volkswagen Beetle that appeared at first glance to be merely an ordinary car. Under the rear hatch, however, lurked a high-performance Porsche engine whose substantial horsepower enabled Herbie to do wheelies and leave impressive black marks on the pavement.

Such is the case with the beer style known as barley wine. Barley wine is made from the standard beer ingredients of malted barley, water and hops, but packs a profound punch of flavor and powerful alcohol, about 8 percent to 12 percent.

The style displays flavors such as caramel, raisins and malt, and has a warming and relaxing quality when enjoyed in a brandy snifter after a hearty meal. Many brewers produce barley wine as seasonal ale released during winter to help their patrons endure the frigid, austere winter cold.

Barley wine is generally defined as ale with extreme levels of alcohol and malt and hops flavor. These days, many microbreweries producing "Imperial" this and that and other extreme brews that don't necessarily mention barley wine on the label.

According to Keith Roberts, owner of Vintage Cellar in Blacksburg, any of these brews qualify as barley wine if they are omore than 8 percent alcohol. I am going to focus on the more traditional styles here.

The history of barley

Back in 1820 England, the water often contained nasty bacteria such as cholera and was generally considered unfit to drink. Beer was considered a staple and a working man consumed an average of 12 pints a day. Women and children imbibed as well.

In 1903, Bass introduced their No. 1 Barley Wine, which received praise from the respected English medical journal, The Lancet. "It possesses a decidedly nourishing value," they wrote.

Due to trade disputes with France in those days, English brewers desired to produce a locally made drink with the complexity of wine. Bass promoted the libation as having the character of a fine wine.

Early barley wine producers used increased amounts of malt and hops, pitched yeast multiple times and rolled barrels around on the floor to revive the yeast so it would ferment a little more sugar into alcohol.

The first American barley wine was the brainchild of Fritz Maytag, proprietor of San Francisco's Anchor brewing company. In the 1970s, Maytag sought to improve his then-lackluster ales. He traveled to England for research and found most of the ales he sampled to be bland and unexciting until he happened upon a barley wine in a pub.

He produced his first barley wine in 1975 and christened it "Old Foghorn," a nod to the brew's age worthiness and San Francisco's seaport foghorn. A spate of imitators followed, and today copious examples of high-gravity brews are produced on both sides of the Atlantic. Virginia residents are fortunate because several states ban barley wines due to ABC regulations prohibiting alcohol over a certain point.

Barley wine improves with years of bottle aging. Don't try this with commercial lagers, because most have a shelf life of 100 days.

Barley wine is the last thing you would want to chug after mowing the grass on a hot summer day, but it is quite satisfying in a snifter after dinner with dessert or rich cheeses.

Make sure to have a designated driver, because the brew is potent. And remember that you have to be gentle with the accelerator in a high-performance car.

Gordon Kendall's column runs monthly in Extra.