Mead or "Honey" Wine

I don’t know about you guys and gals but mead wine or “honey” wine never really impressed me and I never thought to classify it in similar category as “wine”. In the past, when I did get an opportunity to try mead it was either way to dominate in fruit, herb, or spice character and not enough “honey” character or the other way around or just too sweet. It’s pretty hard to believe (or imagine anyway) that characters like Wallace (of Brave Heart) or “Hager the Horrible” (the Viking cartoon) this might have been their favorite drink.
Thursday night at our Long Island Wine Ambassadors (LIWA) meeting during our educational portion of our meeting we had a very interesting guest, Paul Holm, a mead-maker who founded the Long Island Meadery back in 2004. Paul, an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA) who enjoys medieval recreation events found his love of mead at these events. After a lengthy but fruitless search to find a mead to suit his palate, Paul started brewing his own. His production of mead over the next few years increased with strong demand at SCA events, private parties, and weddings. Eventually, production took over his kitchen and the Long Island Meadery was born. Paul was gracious enough to share quite a few of his meads with us. Basically just like wine they run the whole gamut of the taste spectrum- total dry to very sweet, low-alcohol to high-alcohol, still to even sparkling (Paul hasn’t yet released a “commercial” sparkling mead yet but he is working on it) and a whole lot in-between. Surprisingly I found Paul’s meads very balanced (structurally). The dry and semi-dry meads, IMHO anyway, extremely” food friendly”. The sweeter versions definitely IMHO more in line with dessert wines and even “ice” wines.

Salute

I haven't had a lot of mead. I think my first sample was last month at an Ethiopian restaurant in DC, and I'm sure it wasn't the best example.

But, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't as sweet or as cloying as I feared and it had much more grip than I expected.

Not that it was terribly interesting beyond that.

Glad your friend is making good stuff.

I've made some, and I have a friend who makes a lot. I tend to ferment mine dry, and maybe add a little flavoring in the form of lemon peel or some such to compliment the honey flavors. Strictly non-commercial in my case. Never tried any herbs. My friend adds fruit such as blueberry and blackberry, and tends to make them semi-dry to semi-sweet. He is a commercial producer. I think, as with wine, balance is important, and very cautious use of flavoring agents. It will not replace wine in my diet, but it makes a nice change from time to time.

In 1990, I made my first very successful mead - from old buckwheat honey that had completely crystallized. I heated the honey, dissolved it with water and then boiled the "wort", if you will, skimming off the wax that rose to the top. I also added a bit of freshly squeezed orange juice, some orange rind and a few cloves ... Once this cooled, I innoculated with an unlikely suspect: Fleischmann's baker's yeast - never recommendable for wine of any kind, but it worked on the mead just fine. Would you know that at the end of fermentation I had a drink the colour of Guinness, totally dry, with the most incredibly concentrated buckwheat honey taste? I've tried in the ensuing years to recreate that mead, but I think the key to its special nature was the old crystallized honey; most buckwheat honey I buy nowadays is not so dark in colour. That, or maybe it was the Fleischmann's?

What interested me the most, was tasting 10 different types of meads at one sitting and of course chatting with the maker! Discovering the role that different types and varieties of honey play in producing various types and styles of mead really grabbed my attention. (When I think of honey, I think of the Golden Blossom Honey sitting on the supermarket shelf). There are 100’s of different varieties of honey and each one can produce a slightly different type of mead. From the most palest of colors to some of the most rich golden colors. I think, what made enjoying these meads so much was trying to guess the “source” of the “nectar” used to produce the honey.
Yes Alan, Paul did caution me when one is using herbs and spices as an additive especially when using them directly or “whole”. Some spices and herbs if allowed to “mix” for to long of a period of time could extract too much bitter components.
Yes mead will never take the place of wine, but it does have its place and it is a nice change.

Salute

Hi Paul B,
I think its time for me to give this mead thing a shot! Sorry to hear you can not “duplicate” your mead. Paul Holm deals directly with bee-keepers for his source of different varieties of honey.

Salute

I made mead once by following some recipe I found in a book from the library. I don't remember what it was like but I must of not been impressed with it. The bottom line for me is that wine from grapes is easier and tastes better too.

There are 100’s of different varieties of honey and each one can produce a slightly different type of mead. From the most palest of colors to some of the most rich golden colors. I think, what made enjoying these meads so much was trying to guess the “source” of the “nectar” used to produce the honey.
e

We sell many different finds of raw honey in our store here. The truth is for every different kind of flower there is in the world that bees will gather nectar from there is a different kind of honey. I always thought honey tasting would be a real eye opener for most people since they all taste different. I think I might see if I can get some yeast from work and make a batch.

Does mead keep or is it best drunk as fresh as possible?

I should add that, when making mead I would not hesitate to add acid, either citric or tartaric if necessary to achieve good balance. Phosphoric acid is another possibility but outside my experience.

Jay,
I guess just like wine, mead can benefit from some aging. Light bodied meads (light honey) probably a year or more; medium-bodied mead 5 to 10 years and the heavy-bodied mead (heavy honey) 25 years plus. I believe there is a Polish style mead that is actually aged for 25 years before bottling. Due to the honey’s natural preservative abilities one would think mead is a lot more “durable” than wine when it comes to things like temperature, heat or sunlight.

Salute

A few years ago, we stopped at Bonair Winery in Zillah, WA, which is about 15 minutes east of Yakima. At the time, they produced two bottlings of Mead, both of which were dry. The most unique one, however, was their Chili Mead. I was glad to have tasted both of these wines, but decided that Mead really did not appeal to me.

-- Clark