This is not your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother’s mead!
The crack reporters of the Brooklyn Paper Medieval Liquor Bureau sampled a sparkling spirit from Williamsburg’s new artisanal meadery, Honey’s, coming away with mixed feelings on its taste but one common sentiment — it is a far cry from the one-note saccharine honey wine they’d had in the past.
“I think people associate mead with being sickly sweet and this is not that at all,” said deputy boozehound Ruth Brown. “It’s got a lot more complexity than a lot of meads — you can taste there’s a lot of things going on, whether you like it or not.”
Several samplers likened the distiller’s Night Eyes drink — made by fermenting apple, cranberry, and cherry juice then infused with rosehip and sumac — as halfway between a dry cider and the Italian sparking wine Prosecco.
One drinker suggested that the light, crisp, carbonated hooch would work well in an Aperol spritz. Another wanted to match its tart fruit finish with an unctuous cheese.
But it was a little too much like bubbly for one whiskey swigging journalist to be willing to shell out the $30 sticker price.
“I don’t think it’s anything amazing,” said chief lush Max Jaeger. “You could go anywhere to get a bottle of Champagne that tastes pretty much like that.”
Still, most agreed you could impress your friends at a dinner party by surprising them with something that wasn’t beer or wine and subverted their expectations about a drink most people associate with the Dark Ages.
“It’s great to pick up on the way to a party where you want to bring something other than wine — it’s a conversation starter,” said drunkard-in-chief Bill Egbert.
