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Feature
Article:
Submitted by Rita Chapman of Indianapolis, IN
Viagara
Not Needed
If "You've
Lost That Lovin' Feeling," hopefully a glass of Mead will make you
feel like a newlywed in no time! Mythology
claims Mead increases fertility and sex drive.
Mead is known as one of the world's oldest alcoholic drinks and was
brewed in Babylon over 4,000 years ago.
Its affectionate name is the "Honeymoon Wine."
Mead
consists of a blend of honey, wine, fruits and spices.
The earliest styles of Mead were sweet.
Surprisingly, many forms of Mead exist.
Let's now increase our quest of knowledge of this ancient brew.
Traditional
Meads are not made from a single variety of honey.
No fruits, herbs or spices are added.
Sack
Meads are very, very sweet.
Hydromels
are Meads containing 10% alcohol or below.
This is a new category to classify meads.
Melomels
are meads made with fruit, excluding apples or grapes.
Metheglins
are meads made with herbs and spices.
Pyment
is a fermented blend of honey and grape juice.
Specialty
??“ Must be fermented from at least 50% honey.
Varietal
??“ This is made without fruits, herbs or spices.
There are
only around 50 Meaderies throughout the United States, and the states of
Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia all boast meaderies.
Oliver
Winery, located in Bloomington, Indiana, is probably considered the
"King of the Renaissance" of Indiana wineries.
In the early 1970's, Oliver even hosted an annual Camelot Mead
Renaissance Festival. Their
award winning mead is made from orange blossom honey.
Blacksnake
Winery, located in Carroll County, Virginia, make Meads with 10-13% alcohol
which include Traditional Meads, Melomels and Pyments.
These are bottled at six to nine months and continue to improve
with age.
Valley
Vineyards, located in Morrow, Ohio, makes a Honey Mead from fresh
clover Honey.
Cascade
Winery, located in Grand Rapids, Michigan makes two types of Mead.
A Traditional Mead and an Orange Spice Mead both sell for $10.00 a
bottle.
Sandhill
Crane Vineyards offers a truly unusual Mead.
This Michigan winery makes a Melomel Mead called Miel Amour.
It is made with Asian pears, local honey and a hint of cinnamon.
However, it is very sweet with a residual sugar of 10%.
I have saved
the most interesting meadery to the last!
Elwood, Indiana's New Day Meadery is a true meadery as meads are
the only beverages they produce. They
produce a Dry Mead in the Traditional style with no residual sugar.
I have tried this wine and it is truly different.
Also produced, is a Semi-Dry Mead, also made in the Traditional
Style but sweeter with a residual sugar of 4%.
In 2007, New
Day plans to offer several Honey wines such as Dry Blueberry Honey; Dry
Red Raspberry Honey; Dry Peach Honey Wine.
So,
go drink some Mead and cuddle with your "Honey."
Rita
Chapman is a frequent visitor to the Winery Adventures website and attended
the 2007 Indiana Wine Fair.
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Memorial
Day weekend, Gary and I spent two days visiting wineries in northwestern
Pennsylvania. We stopped at La Casa Narcisi (a beautiful winery with
excellent wine and the friendliest people), Winfield Winery (a new
producer doing some great things), Rustic Acres Winery, Conneaut Cellars,
Wilhelm Winery and Volant Mill Winery (which offered a few different
varieties than the other wineries in this area). We were very
impressed with the wines in this region and came home with almost two cases!
We're in the process of writing all the reviews now...so visit the website
for all the details. Pictured:
Sharon and Gary pose for a photo after sampling wine at the Volant Mill
Winery in Volant, Pennsylvania
