Buzzed
Mead — also called honey wine — is enjoying a resurgence around Lake Erie as winemakers look beyond the grape and turn back to what ancient Greeks called the “nectar of the gods.”
It started out as a lark, really.
Sixteen years ago, Brad Dahlhofer and his wife, Kerri, began brewing beer in the basement of their Ferndale, Mich., home. “Once I had a taste for craft beer, the nerd in me wanted to know more and more about it,” Brad says. After working his way through all the beer recipes in Charlie Papazian’s 432-page book, “The Complete Joy of Home Brewing,” he got to the mead section.
His first question: What exactly is mead?
Made by fermenting honey and water, mead is probably civilization’s oldest alcoholic beverage: Evidence of a type of mead wine was found in China and dates to 7,000 BC, and mead is depicted on the tombs of ancient Egyptian royalty. Traditional mead has a high alcohol content – about 12 to 15 percent alcohol by volume – and tastes similar to a sweet white wine such as a Moscato or gewürztraminer.
Thus inspired, Brad decided to whip up a batch. “I tried it,” he says, “and it was horrible.” The next step for Brad was to find out how mead should taste. “I literally drove around all over metro Detroit trying to find a bottle of mead, and I just couldn’t,” he says. “And there’s where the obsession started.”
Finally, he got it right.
What started off as a hobby grew into a business, and in 2008 the couple opened their own meadery called B. Nektar. Now, their mead is sold in nearly 20 states and runs the gamut from winelike to near-beer, often taking on creative flavors and monikers – vanilla-cinnamon, oaked chipotle-cherry, even an Arnold Palmer-style concoction dubbed Kill All the Golfers.
Today, mead isn’t nearly so hard to find. The food and beverage industry is abuzz with this “new” trend that’s popping up around Lake Erie and throughout the country.
South Shore Wine Co. in North East, Pa., was one of the first wineries in the area to take on the task of making wine out of honey. “At that time there was really no one else in any proximity on the wine trail here making mead,” says the winery’s general manager and enologist, Mario Mazza.
Today, South Shore produces a standard honey wine, as well as two variations: One is sweet, mixed with its own raspberry wine; the other is a drier, lower-alcohol mead brewed with Pennsylvania hops, called Hops and Honey.
At Paper Moon Vineyards in Vermillion, Ohio, winemaker Adam Cawrse began making mead out of a love for the taste of local, unpasteurized honey that comes straight from the apiary.
The first step in mead production is to dilute the honey, which in its natural state is too low in moisture to ferment. The water and honey mixture is fermented like wine or beer by adding yeast. This part of the process takes several weeks to many months. From there, it’s just a matter of taste.
Paper Moon bottled Honeymoon directly after this stage, creating a “sweet mead that showed off the honey,” according to Cawrse. His first batch was just under 500 gallons, requiring 1,400 pounds of raw honey.
“I think it’s a great wine for people who don’t love grape wines,” says Cawrse. “It sits a little different on the palate. People are surprised … but wines can be produced from so many different things, not just grapes.” »
Sixteen years ago, Brad Dahlhofer and his wife, Kerri, began brewing beer in the basement of their Ferndale, Mich., home. “Once I had a taste for craft beer, the nerd in me wanted to know more and more about it,” Brad says. After working his way through all the beer recipes in Charlie Papazian’s 432-page book, “The Complete Joy of Home Brewing,” he got to the mead section.
His first question: What exactly is mead?
Made by fermenting honey and water, mead is probably civilization’s oldest alcoholic beverage: Evidence of a type of mead wine was found in China and dates to 7,000 BC, and mead is depicted on the tombs of ancient Egyptian royalty. Traditional mead has a high alcohol content – about 12 to 15 percent alcohol by volume – and tastes similar to a sweet white wine such as a Moscato or gewürztraminer.
Thus inspired, Brad decided to whip up a batch. “I tried it,” he says, “and it was horrible.” The next step for Brad was to find out how mead should taste. “I literally drove around all over metro Detroit trying to find a bottle of mead, and I just couldn’t,” he says. “And there’s where the obsession started.”
Finally, he got it right.
What started off as a hobby grew into a business, and in 2008 the couple opened their own meadery called B. Nektar. Now, their mead is sold in nearly 20 states and runs the gamut from winelike to near-beer, often taking on creative flavors and monikers – vanilla-cinnamon, oaked chipotle-cherry, even an Arnold Palmer-style concoction dubbed Kill All the Golfers.
Today, mead isn’t nearly so hard to find. The food and beverage industry is abuzz with this “new” trend that’s popping up around Lake Erie and throughout the country.
South Shore Wine Co. in North East, Pa., was one of the first wineries in the area to take on the task of making wine out of honey. “At that time there was really no one else in any proximity on the wine trail here making mead,” says the winery’s general manager and enologist, Mario Mazza.
Today, South Shore produces a standard honey wine, as well as two variations: One is sweet, mixed with its own raspberry wine; the other is a drier, lower-alcohol mead brewed with Pennsylvania hops, called Hops and Honey.
At Paper Moon Vineyards in Vermillion, Ohio, winemaker Adam Cawrse began making mead out of a love for the taste of local, unpasteurized honey that comes straight from the apiary.
The first step in mead production is to dilute the honey, which in its natural state is too low in moisture to ferment. The water and honey mixture is fermented like wine or beer by adding yeast. This part of the process takes several weeks to many months. From there, it’s just a matter of taste.
Paper Moon bottled Honeymoon directly after this stage, creating a “sweet mead that showed off the honey,” according to Cawrse. His first batch was just under 500 gallons, requiring 1,400 pounds of raw honey.
“I think it’s a great wine for people who don’t love grape wines,” says Cawrse. “It sits a little different on the palate. People are surprised … but wines can be produced from so many different things, not just grapes.” »
Story:
Laura Adiletta
2014 May/June