Honeymakers Local 151: Dry Mead by White Winter Winery

Perhaps, if Grendel had been treated a bit better in his youth instead of being cast out to stew in the toxic juices of resentment and bloodlust and Hrothgar and his pals could have had some courtesy and been open to keeping the noise down at Heorot, maybe, just maybe, Beowolf could have brought the aggrieved parties together over a glass of mead and found some kind of détente. You know, like Nixon going to China.

But no. Instead the bloodshed reached a fever pitch as some poor Geats became the plat du jour at Grendel's grisly table before Beowolf relieved the chef himself of one of his arms followed by his life. Heeding the Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye, Grendel's mother sets out to exact revenge but ends up losing her life too. A truly ghastly affair.

Luckily I can enjoy mead today without fear that some hideous, bloodthirsty monster is going to burst in and start eating my kith and kin.

I think I have some kind of atavistic impulse to drink the stuff with all of my Central and Eastern European blood. With the odd exception, I don't drink wine but rather enjoy mead. I do, however, feel bad for the bees. I mean, those bee ladies spend all this time and effort risking life and limb to gather nectar and make honey only to have some human hork it all. Let's hope honey bees never read Marx and learn about workers controlling the means of production or Locke and discover that the fruits of one's labors are your own or we could be in serious trouble.

While I don't doubt that mead's popularity has benefitted from the slow food and craft beer movements, the Boston Beer Company does not have a subsidiary dedicated to it so I think the venerable beverage has a long row to hoe before it finds wide appeal.

Although it's a niche product, there is still a fair amount of mead to be found on store shelves here in Madison. And much of it is made right here in Wisconsin. No doubt people have fermenting honey for ages here in the Land of Cheese but the progenitor of the modern meadery in our fair state is surely White Winter Winery up north in Iron River. I believe theirs was the first mead I ever tasted and I visited the place once back in 2005 returning with a large cache of fine honey wine.

Founded in 1996, they began by offering mead, dry & sweet, fruited and not, with what appears to be Boreas' face on the label just to remind everyone of how cold it gets up by Lake Superior. They have since added less wine-like meads that have less alcohol and a generous dose of fizz to their portfolio. At some point, they got into the cider business as well.

For our purposes here, I am going to blather on about their dry mead.

Looking at it, the mead is nearly colorless with only a faint yellow tint. It was crystal clear and, as they say in meady circles, still, i.e. - not fizzy. Would you believe that it smelled like honey? I know that the scent and taste of honeys will vary depending on the flowers from which the nectar was drawn but I have no idea where the honey that made this mead came from. (Is there a word like "terroir" but for flowers?) It smelled like honey, mainly. There was a mild floral sent too along with strawberry. I could also smell that astringent alcohol scent, but it wasn't unpleasant.

This stuff was smooth with a medium-light body. Light sweetness was balanced by firm dryness. It tasted like honey with its floral/earthy flavors that included something vanilla-like. The sweetness lingered a long time after swallowing but a tannin dryness eventually swept it away.

I adore this mead with its fairly light, mild taste. It's dry but not mouth puckeringly so like a red wine, but it's also not cloyingly sweet. The label says that natural flavors were added but I have no idea what they were. It simply has a lovely honey flavor and is dangerously drinkable.

Junk food pairing: a light, dry mead like this one will pair well with white meats and mild cheeses so get yourself a box of Chicken in a Bisket crackers and dose them with the American cheese flavored Easy Cheese.