La Folie Sour Brown Ale

I’ve been following and reading The Mad Fermentationist for a few months now and that has lead me to seek out some Sour Beer.  I have never tried a sour beer before this.
Venturing to a local Specs I browsed what the average Joe-six-pack would consider to be the “beer oddity” isle.  I looked for something like “gueuze”, “lambic”, “Flanders”, etc.  There wasn’t much to choose from.  What I found were some ales produced by New Belgium Brewery.
La Folie Sour Brown Ale is one of the Lips of Faith series of ales by New Belgium Brewery in Colorado.  The description is that it is a Spontaneous fermented ale in the Flanders style.  I’m assuming this is meaning to emulate a Flanders Brown and not a Flanders Red.  It states on the bottle “Seriously Sour…”.  Hmmm…
Rate Beer rates the La Folie Sour Brown an Overall 100 and a 98 on Style.  Most reviews that I read spoke of dark cherries and sour candy with the occasional comment of over-ripened fruit.  Last I checked there were 792 ratings that went into this assessment.
Beer Advocate rates this an “A” Outstanding with 506 reviewers.  The average rating is 4.26 out of a 5.
Sounds like I picked a winner here, an ale that was rated very high by both Beer Advocate and Rate Beer with plenty of favorable reviews.
It poured out a ruby red/brown with a thin off-white head that dissipated quickly to appear to my untrained eye like the effervescence from a freshly poured Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper.  so far, so good, product is “as advertised” and living up to my expectations.  Sorry, I took no pictures of this event and didn’t think of it until later.
The aroma was wonderful, much like a combined cherry pie, dark fruit like prunes or dates, with a foundation of malty beer.  There was already some acidic bite to it, enough to start the salivary glands going with that feeling of pressure in the floor of the mouth on either side of the tongue all in anticipation of that first sip.
The first sip was a shock to my mouth.  I am obviously not used to sour beer in any way and for a millisecond the thought raced through my head that this bottle had gone bad.  The shock subsided, and the mellowness of well aged, and cared for, no.  The French/Belgian term of guarded as in “Bier De Garde” was more appropriate.  This was a very good beer, and I longed for a second sip to confirm the perceptions of the first.  Had I been fooled?  The second sip was less eventful, but I was still struggling with the sour aspect of this beer.  It seemed so wrong, so out of place to me.  Then the sourness fades and the other delightful flavors come through. 
Maybe I’m just not a sour beer guy, I don’t know.  I poured some more from the bottle into my glass and began to enjoy it less and less as I got through it.  I was only able to finish roughly 16 of the 22 oz bottle before it was no longer appealing to me.  Would I buy it again?  Probably not.  Maybe I need to train my palate on some more plebian sour beers before coming back to this one.  It did say “Seriously Sour” right on the bottle and they weren’t kidding.