Weihenstephaner

Weihenstephaner is the brand of the Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan in Freising, which styles itself the oldest working brewery in the world, dating its founding to 1040, when the local Benedictine monastery is said to have received brewing rights from the bishop. Take the date as the brewery's own claim: historians regard the underlying charter as a seventeenth-century fabrication, and the first unambiguous record of a brewery on the hill dates from 1675. What no one disputes is that brewing at Weihenstephan is centuries deep.

The monastery was dissolved in 1803 during Bavaria's secularization and the brewery passed to the state, which owns it still; the name Bayerische Staatsbrauerei — Bavarian State Brewery — has been in use since 1921. Its hilltop home doubles as one of brewing's great campuses: the brewery shares the Weihenstephan hill with the Technical University of Munich's renowned brewing faculty, so tradition and brewing science live next door to each other.

That closeness shows in the glass. The flagship Hefeweissbier is widely treated as a reference for the Bavarian wheat beer style, and the lineup runs from Original, a helles, to Vitus, a pale weizenbock. For a brewery that leans on a disputed birthday, the beers need no embellishment.

The flagship Hefeweissbier pours hazy gold with ripe banana and clove aromas, a pillowy wheat-malt body, and a fresh, gently spicy finish.