Lyme Bay Christmas Mead (£11.50, 75cl, 14%)

Now I’ve never been a fan of Christmas, it seems to be a festival devoted to stress, family arguments, idiotic behavior and it has always brought the worse out of my parents sometimes with violent results.

So for the last couple of years I’ve been avoiding going home, although last year I seem to have been tricked into a) cooking Christmas dinner for friends and then b) visting family on Boxing day with the usual results.

After various excitements on the Rainbow Warrior this year I wanted to follow a friends advice and simply go to Quinns, his local Irish pub. I’d already planned an exciting new year with my sister on Knoydart, the UK’s last wilderness (well sort of) and so an especially grumpy Christmas seemed ideal.

Having enjoyed a few pints we headed back to his, where it turned out he’d cheated and laid on some festive cheer (bastard) in the form of a Turkey thing. I’d come prepared with a bottle of Lyme bay Christmas mead from the trip to Dorset.

As a new adventure, and perhaps a Christmas tradition we heated the mead, and what a delightful experience it was. Warm, sweet and full of spices. Similar to a mulled wine but much nicer and without the artifice of adding sugar to a cheap bottle of red plonk. Mead was clearly designed to be served hot to sooth the winters chill.

To be honest I can’t remember a huge amount of details regarding the precise taste and the spices may well have masked the subtly of the honey and bitters. Still I’ll very happily drink many more Lyme Bay meads and before the winter is out, I’d like to try a few more evenings of hot mead.

The only fly is the description on the website regarding the Christmas mead:

A rich, smooth honey Mead blended with festive spices.
Awarded One-star Gold at the 'Great Taste Awards' 2009

Which suggests I should be stockpiling more for Christmas 2011

Catch the Bear Mead

This may be a slightly odd aside on the journey for Mead but yesterday somewhere between dressing like a Pirate and the usual peculiarities of Slimelight I finished a friend’s bottle of Catch the Bear Mead. Undoubtably a pun on honey bears.

At least I think it was Mead, at 36% abv it was definitely on the side of the honey brandies, poured from a glass bottle in the shape of a teddy bear. This slightly disturbed me, but then I’m already pretty disturbed, thus the picture.

A find at last years Witchfest, sold to my mate by a German dressed as a Scot, named Aengus MacLeod. Of course it was. We think this makes it a German mead, but who can tell

With the scent akin to Calvados, this one promises to be er… interesting, and the taste was that of a very sweet Potcheen. A shot of alcohol with enough honey and sugar to take the burning aftertaste away. Quite pleasant really, but probably never to be repeated.