It's been a while since I've had mead. At about this time last year I went on a little honey wine jag but I lost the momentum. Not long ago I noticed a bottle of Necro mead at the back of our refrigerator just waiting to be opened. I felt like the Doctor in "The Awakening" stumbling upon the Malus as I poked around only to be confronted by the face of a demon when all I wanted was some cream for my coffee. I've had it before, back in the days when it was still called Necromangocon.
Necro is made by B. Nektar over in suburban Kadath, er, Detroit. It appears they are no longer a mere meadery and have branched out into beer and cider as well. I don't know that B. Nektar was ever content with making a plain mead as they've added fruit and spices to their meads for as long as I can recall. The words "modern" and "sub-pop culture" appear on their website more than once giving me the impression they hired a sociologist to do their ad copy. And seeing all of those pop culture references on their labels makes me wonder if that sociologist had read some Foucault. What is "sub-pop cultury" about zombies and AT-AT's from The Empire Strikes Back and H.P. Lovecraft?
There's just this precocious 12-year old kid vibe about B. Nektar, always saying, "Look how clever I am!" in a bid for attention. Maybe that's what a meadery needs to do to stay afloat, in addition to making cider and beer.
But what's important is the taste and quality of, in this case, the mead.
Necro is a mango mead, i.e. - a mead with mango juice added, though I don't know where it gets added in the process of making the stuff, plus black pepper. It is 6.2% A.B.V. which is much less potent than your typical mead/wine. A session mead? A small mead?
I am not sure how I managed such a canted angle in this picture. My excuse is that I'd been listening to a podcast about film noir and the genre's use of them.
Despite the daemonic label and the sepulchral name with its Lovecraftian overtones, Necro was no stygian spirit but, rather, straw colored. And clear. My pour produced a lively, though short-lived, head of soda-like fizz. It smelled rather sweet and of - quelle surprise! - honey and mango.
When fruit is added to adult beverages these days, I assume that it'll be a prominent flavor with plenty of sweetness behind it so as to give it that Hawaiian Punch sheen. I was pleasantly surprised here to find that the mango was fairly restrained, setting it on a more or less equal footing with the honey instead of being its superior. The honey provided not only its lovely earthy-vanilla flavor but also a nice floral accent. There was a hint of that fizz - just enough to give a medium body instead of something heavier.
On the finish, the sweet flavors faded to a surprisingly dry finish. Not very dry, mind you, but drier than you'd expect for a mead with mango juice. Cleared the sweetness away quite nicely. I think I finally tasted the black pepper here. Nothing strong and instead a nice, mellow woody undertone.
I may find B. Nektar's ad copy and brand image a bit cloying but Necro is anything but. This is wonderful mead. Not particularly sweet - I'd hazard a guess and say it qualifies as semi-dry - with the honey and mango flavors perfectly balanced and the pepper making for a really nice accent. With a lighter body than your typical/ normal strength stuff, it goes down quite easily.
A drink fit for Abdul Alhazred himself.
Junk food pairing: Pair your Necro (sounds a bit disgusting - sorry) with a bag of Lay's Kettle Cooked Maui Onion potato chips.
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