The squire was "Prinked out he was, as if he were a mead, all full of fresh-cut flowers white and red." — Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
Mere mention of honey wine (mead) takes me straight back to high school and the Canterbury Tales. My English teacher, Mr. Kineally was so enthralled with Medieval literature this enthusiastic fellow read daily out loud of the 29 pilgrims to Canterbury with zeal, humor and a thoroughly captivating pronunciation of old English.
Chaucer isn't the only literary big-shot to celebrate mead. J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy readers are more than familiar with its honeyed charms.
Though it does rather conjure images of thatched roofs, tankards and trestle tables, mead is making a big come back today in the craft food and wine world.
Nowhere more so in Northern California than at the coastal bee haven of Heidrun Meadery, in rural West Marin.
Heidrun is the first Meadery to make its Mead in the Champagne-style and it's well worth planning a visit to taste and tour.
Mead is meant to be enjoyed after a short (four-month) fermentation and aging process. Heidrun varietals taste like sparkling wine, but with a distinctive honey-tone. Not surprisingly, as it takes 8 ounces of honey to produce one bottle of this delicious bubbly.
The Meadery has been at home on a 16-acre former cattle ranch since 2011, its production facility a renovated milking barn fitted out with state-of-the-art sparkling wine making machinery and equipment. Heidrun meads were first crafted in Arcata in Humboldt County. Bay Area being its primary market made a move to Marin a winning formula and foodies and fermentation fans from around the region now come calling in a bee-line of their own.
A full-time horticulturalist and a bee keeper are on staff. Nine hives supply just enough honey for a limited production highly prized Point Reyes Wildflower Estate Varietal, several other options might not be quite as hyper-local but are just as good. California native flowers are planted on site, particularly those with an optimum blue and purple color scheme that bees love.
Additional hives in Marshall and Bolinas make equally distinctive honey for unique mead. Billions of bees on the Hawaiian islands are to thank for the Meadery's bulk supply of a mind-boggling 55 gallon honey barrel stockpile for the necessary fixings for the majority of Heirdrun's mead.
To make a sparkling mead it's necessary to liquify one part honey with four parts water and give it a quick boil to kill off wild yeast. Pollen and wax are skimmed off and the liquified honey is cooled and inoculated with sparkling wine yeast. This, in turn, eats all the sugar from the honey and creates carbon dioxide.
After initial bubbles are removed over a week long period, soon-to-be-sparkling mead sits in a stainless steel Champagne kettle for a month before the clear part of the liquid is syphoned into a bottling kettle, inoculated with fine cane sugar, bottled and stoppered with beer caps ready for secondary fermentation in wooden casing.
The next process that rids the mead of dead yeast and sediment involves the time-old practice of hand turning bottles a quarter turn daily on an old-fashioned, up-right wooden rack for one week.
Bottles are then placed in a thoroughly more modern machine called a neck freezer for disgorging the sediment. Pressure in the bottles shoots out the sediment when bottle caps are removed and corking comes into play.
According to the Oxford English dictionary, the term Honeymoon derives from the drinking of honeyed meade, gifts given during the first month of marriage: "Mid 16th century (originally denoting the period of time following a wedding): from honey + moon. The original reference was to affection waning like the moon, but later the sense became 'the first month after marriage'.
Southern Sonoma County readers interested in tasting these lovely (12.5% alcohol) bubblies may pick up a bottle or two at Vine & Barrel or Wilibees in Petaluma, or look for Heidrun Mead on the wine menus at Lagunitas Brewing Company, Speakeasy and Wild Goat Bistro.
Tasting hours during summer months are daily from 11 am to 4 pm, Saturdays and Sundays through to 4.30 pm.
Heidrun Meadery is located at 11925 State Route ,Point Reyes Station, CA 94956
If you'd like to taste and tour, do make a reservation ahead of time.
Picnic tables around back and in front of the tasting barn are reservable too. The Meadery is just a little ways out of Point Reyes Station, traveling north on Highway One. Pick up picnic supplies in town or pack your own.
"I have never seen mead enjoyed more in any hall on earth,"
Seamus Heaney, Beowulf
"They sat at the table with their wooden drinking bowls filled with mead,"
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
"The years have passed like swift draughts of sweet mead in lofty halls beyond the west,"
J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
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