Murky brown color which is not especially attractive, looks drab. The head is OK given the beer, and recedes, as expected, to a thinnish collar. In better light the beer looks like it has some more crimson/purple hue.

Nose is a very woody based acidity.

The tastes don’t reflect the wood for me, and although there’s plenty of acid here, the cherry and chocolate aren’t really that specifically discernible. The mid-palate of the beer is a rather pleasant, sweet and sour combo which finishes a little drier in the back end than the earlier tastes might have suggested.

If the chocolate is having any influence it’s extraordinarily small, and it maybe that it’s just a small level of sweetness. This is not a “chocolately” beer by any stretch of the imagination.

I don’t really know what’s achieved here, maybe another way to take the edge off a regular Duchesse? Outside of that don’t expect chocolate.