Chaucer’s Mead
Ahhh, mead. Is it a wine or is it a beer? Perhaps this is
the question first and foremost we should address. Given that I have made mead
a number of times myself, I can assert that I used, every time and without
fail, a wine yeast. This, in itself, leads then to the conclusion that what I
made, at least, was more a wine than a beer…or was it? The process was also
identical, nearly, to how I home-brewed beer, at least in the early stages, so
perhaps it is more like a beer…except there are more similarities than
differences in brewing any sort of alcoholic beverage at that level. Indeed, in
the early stages, perhaps all alcohol fermentation is apt to be more alike than
not and the secondary stages and the primary ingredients are then the main
differences. All this academia aside, I’m sticking with it being a wine.
Now then, without a digression into the author of Canterbury
Tales, we slip into another entry that is perhaps one of the more confusing
ones as this is a wine we only drink once a year and that is on New Year’s Eve
for our annual celebration of the crowning year upon the dead and shambled husk
of the previous one…or just changing calendars. So, the wine is not nearly good
enough to be a constant companion and is quite inferior to the ones I’ve
brewed, so why is it on this list?
There’s a few reasons. The first is that it probably will be
the only mead you can find. In this case, someone wisely saw and filled a void
and it is fortunate that this is as good as it is…if you want to experience
mead, that is. It is also a very, very light wine and like all entries on this
list, easy on the senses, meaning that for a list to appear on here, it also
cannot be skull-breaking for yours truly the next day. The taste here is more
on the sweet side, but it is neither the full-on sweet blast of an early mead
nor the very airy and dry taste of one that has spent more time in the rack.
The second reason is that it does have a bit of magic to it.
My wife and I have greatly enjoyed having this as a tradition and it’s
something to which we look forward to every year. Perhaps more an extension of
the second reason, but third, maybe, is the fact that this is very accessible
and flexible. We’ve had it cold, room temperature, hot and mulled and all of
them were delectable with perhaps mulled, which we finally tried at the end of
2014, being our new favorite. This is not an easy task for any wine to pull
off, yet this one did it easily and breathlessly. It also lists it as sort of
being a dessert wine, but that is a bit of a misnomer. This one will come
nowhere near any Moscato or ice wine or even a good Riesling.
As with all whites, this one will not be ranked, but given
that this has become sort of an ironclad tradition for us now, this deserves to
be noted and recognized thusly. Perhaps if more people experience the delight
and unique taste sensation that only mead can deliver, it will become more
popular enough to keep the bees at work and put this concoction in the ranks of
its grape brethren.
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