On the wind-whipped shore of Tomales Bay, just uphill from the marshes near element Reyes Station, local honey is dissolved into vats of water and fermented into what may be the oldest alcoholic beverage — mead.
here's Heidrun Meadery. Going north on motorway 1, take a left into the driveway. Lean your bicycle towards a submit. Now, have a look round. You may find it as humorous as I did throughout my first seek advice from that someone had planted a picturesque orchard of olive trees right here. nice contact, but in fact? Olives on the coast? This isn't Sicily. Whoever planted them should have planted apples. I asked later about the bushes and realized that they have been planted earlier than Heidrun install camp here in 2011. i was informed the timber, even though doing the most beneficial they could on the chilly shores of the bay, have not yet produced fit to be eaten fruit.
Anyway, I'm assuming you need mead, so go internal the greenhouse (yes, the tastings are performed in a greenhouse). It's warmer in here, and the meads are lined up on the chest-excessive counter for tasting. It's $15 an individual for 4 samples (roughly the equivalent of a pitcher-and-a-half of wine) of mead. No reservation is required, though you must call ahead in case you hope to have a tour of the property, which includes a vegetable farm.
Heidrun's lineup includes meads fabricated from California orange blossom honey, point Reyes wildflower honey, alfalfa and clover blossom honey, California avocado blossom honey and Oregon radish blossom.
Mead, one discovers on the Heidrun tasting bar, is delicious. It isn't cloyingly candy, both. simply as grape juice can be fermented to dryness, so can honey water. Heidrun's meads are gleaming (most meads aren't) and are made via the méthode Champenoise used in making certain bubbly wines. In flavor and aroma, mead is fully entertaining. though the yeast ferments the honey nearly absolutely into alcohol, satisfactory aromatic and flavor compounds stay to tell your tongue in an quick that this drink is made from the sweet nectary spittle of bees.
Ah, mead! The taste is wealthy and buttery. at the extra nuanced stage, you're going to detect extraordinary variations in aroma and taste — floral and tropical fruit notes, candy and savory herbs and, at all times, that aromatic, strangely pungent, essence of honey.
In our somewhat binary beverage world of beer and wine, mead struggles (as does sake) to claim its identification. On one hand, mead appears extra similar to beer than wine. Many homebrewers of beer dabble in mead making, and at beer tasting fairs, one who appears intently can occasionally discover a mead maker lurking in a nook somewhere, with a lineup for sampling. often, brewers make beer-mead hybrids by means of including honey to their brew kettles.
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however this historical beverage, which has roots in lots of lands from the equatorial tropics to the high Nordic latitudes, has absorbed one of the vital stylistic and vernacular nuances of the wine society. americans who make mead commonly use "varietal" as an adjective (when discussing diverse honeys) and they like to say their honey is "estate grown" if the beehives are on the property. every so often, they call their mead "honey wine." Mead is generally bought in wine bottles, and in supermarkets, like whole foods, the small choice of meads always dwells uncertainly simply to the facet of the chilled whites.
in the conclusion, mead is mead, and in view that I actually have committed this beer column to cider, sake and whiskey, I have dedicated this week's to mead. Heidrun opens at eleven a.m. daily, other than Tuesdays, when it is closed.
Alastair Bland's through the Hopvine runs per week in Zest. Contact him at allybland79@gmail.com.
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