New Belgium debuts Tarot-inspired golden sour with raspberries, blackberries
Queen of Cups paired raspberries and blackberries with a 5.5% ABV golden sour, as New Belgium used Tarot art and summer-solstice timing to widen its sour audience.
New Belgium leaned on raspberries, blackberries, and Tarot-card art for Queen of Cups, a 5.5% ABV golden sour that arrived as a warm-weather play for drinkers who want acidity without the sharper edge of many sour beers. The beer came in 12-ounce cans and was tied to the summer solstice, a retail-friendly setup that made it feel built for shelf appeal as much as for tap handles.
That positioning fit a brewery that has spent years making sour beer easier to approach. Queen of Cups landed alongside a lineup that already included La Folie Sour Brown Ale, Le Terroir Dry-Hopped American Sour Ale, Transatlantique Kriek Sour Ale, Sour IPA, and Grape Fizz Ale. New Belgium describes Grape Fizz as a summer seasonal inspired by classic grape soda, and it uses golden sour ale with Concord grape juice and calamansi, or gold lime. Queen of Cups pushed the same lane in a different direction, swapping grape soda nostalgia for a brighter raspberry-and-blackberry profile.
La Folie remains the anchor point for that strategy. New Belgium calls it “America’s pioneering sour ale,” and the beer is matured in giant French oak wine barrels called foeders that contain the oldest continuous souring culture in America. Queen of Cups did not read like a break from that heritage so much as a more approachable spin on it, with the fruit-forward packaging doing some of the work that barrel age and funk usually have to carry on their own.
The release also reflected the scale New Belgium has behind it. The company operates major breweries in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Asheville, North Carolina, including an 18-acre, LEED-certified Asheville site. It was acquired by Lion Little World Beverages in 2019, Bell’s Brewery joined New Belgium in 2022 to form a larger craft beer platform, and Shaun Belongie was named New Belgium’s next CEO in November 2023, replacing Steve Fechheimer. In that context, Queen of Cups looked like a deliberate portfolio move: colorful, seasonal, and designed to keep a legacy sour program feeling current without drifting into niche territory.
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