Articles

Seeking a taste of the past? Get thee to a meadery

by Evan Peter Ehrlich, Special to the Chronicle.
Thursday, February 19, 2004

Honey, created from flowers by bees, is a wonder unto itself. Add a little water and yeast, and you have mead.

Mead is enjoying a renaissance. It is suitable for almost any occasion and is becoming increasingly available. For many, it offers something new to please the palate.

Mead is made from honey, diluted with water and fermented by yeast and has an alcohol content similar to wine. Still or sparkling, dry and light or sweet and full-bodied, mead is usually clear and light-golden in color. "Traditional mead is a treasure capturing the essence of honey and the nectar of blossoms," says Charlie Papazian, president and founder of the Association of Brewers.

Dry mead is lively and crisp up front with a pleasing acidity. Hints of apricot, pear and other soft fruits characterize the mid-palate and are followed by soft honey tones that override a long finish, which can include caramel and nuts, especially in older meads.

With semisweet and sweet meads, the front palate has a noticeable fruitiness (sweetness) with the honey becoming apparent early and carrying through to the finish as it commingles with fruits and sometimes raisins.

Mead can exhibit as much flavor and aromatic complexity as wine, but generally absent are those earthy tones and tannins. Bottle-conditioned meads, such as the one Arcata's Heidrun Meadery offers, will also express some yeast flavors with age.

There are many variations of mead incorporating various fruits and spices. Some mead makers refer to mead made with fruit as honey wine. However, in contemporary usage, "honey wine" and "mead" are generally interchangeable.

Mead's first appearance in history is a mystery, but most agree it's the oldest fermented beverage. Plato described mead before the time of Christ. A 12,000-year-old cave painting in Belgium depicts honey gathering and an amorous liaison between a man and a woman -- a reference to mead's professed aphrodisiacal qualities. Cave paintings in South Africa indicate that the drinking of this beverage was part of an ancient culture there at least 25,000 years ago.

Mead making arose independently in a wide range of ancient cultures. Over time, mead's popularity lost ground to the advent of beer making, and a greater availability of wine, especially through expanded trade to northern climates that were inhospitable to viticulture.

Today, there are at least five commercial mead makers in California and several dozen in the United States, with others in countries around the world. Compared to winemakers, mead makers are few and far between. But the beverage is available if you are willing to look.

The oldest commercial mead producer in California is Bargetto Winery. In addition to its wines from the Santa Cruz Mountains, Bargetto makes Chaucer's Mead, a blend of sage, alfalfa and orange blossom honeys. Bargetto includes a spice packet with every bottle to encourage people to try this mead mulled, meaning warmed with spices. According to Mel Nunez, a former Bargetto tasting room employee who now heads the beverage department at Cost Plus in Santa Cruz, "Heated Chaucer's Mead with spices sold well at the tasting room in Monterey, especially when the cool summer weather hit."

In Sunnyvale, Rabbit's Foot Meadery has produced excellent mead for more than 14 years. The proprietor, Michael Faul, makes each of his meads from a single variety of honey.

Rabbit's Foot currently offers four meads. Its sweet mead is made with jasmine honey and the dry mead is made with raspberry honey, or honey from raspberry blossoms. Rabbit's Foot also makes Private Reserve Pear Mead, which is made from honey, pears and spices. Each of these is 12 percent to 13 percent alcohol by volume.

The Rabbit's Foot Grand Reserve Mead of Poetry is distinctive because of its method of aging and its strength. It weighs in at 17 percent alcohol by volume and is the result of years of work. It is aged in oak barrels using the Solera system, the method used to produce fine sherry. This involves bottling from the oldest of a multitiered collection of barrels and blending in younger mead to top off the barrels.

"It allows one to achieve a sameness in product year after year," says Faul.

This aperitif stands apart from other meads because of its strength, full body and round, nutty flavor. Production is only 100 cases; advance ordering may be the only way to get some.

Another avant-garde mead producer is Gordon Hull of Heidrun Meadery. Named after the mythological goat that provided mead for Odin and other battle- glorious Norsemen in Valhalla, Heidrun is California's only maker of sparkling meads. Chuck Hayward, the wine buyer at The Jug Shop in San Francisco, refers to mead as an eclectic product of which not many people are aware. Still, "When Gordon pours a tasting, it sells well," says Hayward.

Heidrun offers five varieties in each of two styles. It produces bottle- fermented meads, which are described as a lightly effervescent, rustic tradition. Heidrun also makes meads in the methode champenoise style, similar to that of fine sparkling wine and Champagne. The mead undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle, the bottle is turned on a regular basis so that the yeast sediment settles into its neck, and then the yeast is expelled, or disgorged, before the bottle is capped.

Mountain Meadows Meadery, a family-owned micro-winery in Westwood (Lassen County), produces several traditional meads and a wide variety of fruit and spiced meads including persimmon, cranberry, apricot and agave.

Enat Winery in Oakland makes a beverage called Tej -- a traditional Ethiopian drink made from honey and gesho, which Enat describes as a unique form of hops.

A glass of mead reflects on the history and mythology that surrounds this beverage. When you enjoy mead you are engaging in an activity that has spanned many cultures since before written history.

MORE ABOUT MEAD

Local retail prices for meads range between $8 and $16 for a 750 ml bottle. Rabbit's Foot Grand Reserve Mead of Poetry sells for $35 for a 350 ml bottle.

With the exception of Rabbit's Foot Grand Reserve, all the meads described come in 750 ml bottles with cork closures. The sparkling meads from Heidrun Meadery are packaged in 750 ml Champagne-style bottles with cork and wire closures.

Sparkling meads should be served as you would Champagne or sparkling wine, chilled to 40°F and served in a flute. Temperatures for serving other meads is a matter of taste; as a general rule, dry meads are served chilled and sweet meads can be chilled or served at room temperature.

SELECTED BAY AREA RETAILERS

Beverages & More, various locations

Cost Plus, various locations

Whole Foods, various locations

Rainbow Grocery, 1745 Folsom St., San Francisco; (415) 863-0620

The Jug Shop, 1567 Pacific Ave., San Francisco; (415) 885-2922

Berkeley Bowl Marketplace, 2020 Oregon St., Berkeley; (510) 843-6929

Ethiopian-style mead is also poured at Sawa Eritrean Restaurant #2 ($20/bottle and $5/glass), 1655 Divisadero St., San Francisco; (415) 441-4182