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→What's In A Name?
===What's In A Name?===
Significant confusion over unsweetened and sweetened lambic products ensued, and some brewers note that sweetening lambic was squeezing out traditional lambic. Jean-Pierre Van Roy is quoted in [[Books#Wild_Brews:_Culture_and_Craftsmanship_in_the_Belgian_Tradition|''Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition'']] as saying that “the sweet lambic, the sweet fruit beer, and the sweet gueuze don’t exist. It’s impossible. If it is very sweet there are three possibilities: It is not a lambic, it has aspartame added, or it is pasteurized. Lambic is a natural product.”<ref name=WildBrews>Jeff Sparrow, [[Books#Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition|Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition]], 2005</ref> However, history has shown that sweetening has played a significant role in the history, success, and survival, of lambic in general throughout the years. Indeed, Jean Van Roy has agreed on at least one occasion that his father was using saccharine to sweeten beers as a “means to basically save the brewery … because people wanted sweet things.” <ref name=summit9>Lambic Summit, part 9 (Shelton Brothers), Jean VanRoy, 2010,</ref> Sweetening lambic was viewed as a normal part of the business.
As lambic brewers and blenders began to recognize the importance of keeping the older traditions alive, some banded together to form [[HORAL]]. This group aims to promote lambic beers, brewing, and culture in Belgium. Their stated goals are "to promote the craft lambic beers and related products, paying attention to the entire process of brewing to serving lambic; denouncing irregularities concerning artisanal lambic beers and related products; take steps to protect the traditional lambic beers and related products".<ref name = HORALAssociation> HORAL - Association, Members, and History, http://www.horal.be/vereniging (Dutch)</ref> HORAL has worked to obtain and maintain current European Protections on traditional lambic beers since the Traditionally Specialty Guaranteed (TSG) label was assigned to them in 1997.<Ref name = Avermaete&Vandermosten> Tessa Avermaete and Gert Vandermosten, Traditional Belgian Beers in a Global Market Economy, 2009 </ref> It guaranteed that any sweetened geuze would simply be called ‘geuze’ and any fully traditionally produced geuze would be called ‘oude geuze’, with the adjective ‘oude’ as a title that guarantees that the beer has been prepared the old, traditional way.