An unlikely occurrence of Mead

A somewhat strange occurance last night at my favourite local.

After a successful meeting in Mabels Tavern, which (to a degree) represented the culmination of a years worth of conspiring to set up a new Peace & Disarmament network. A wee bit merry and by random chance I suggested getting together at the Oakdale for a few more beers.

The Oakdale is a strange pub. It’s a back street local but a most peculiar one. They do agood beer from the Milton brewery, a fine range of malt whiskeys and as I discovered a range of meads.

Also the landlord also is one of the tallest Goths I’ve met, and used to (I think) organise ‘synthetic culture’ back in the day. Of late the pub has installed great big aquariums full of Lizards, and on occasion the landlord encourages them to sit on patrons, which is kind of surreal. The juke box is full of old goth classics, and in case you can’t tell I like it here.

Anyhow last night I bought a beer, settled down for a drink and a chat. The bar tender then turned up with a couple of shot glasses as a free gift (you see it is dead nice here). Somewhat confused I looked at them, wondering what and why. My friend started to question if they were a mead, they were, and a familiar sweet smell suggested something strange.

The bar tender pointed out they weren’t shots but glasses of mead. My mind boggled as my friend suggested I was the biggest mead geek in history. I explained about this site and the bartender described the range of Moniack (a Cornish mead??), Gales and I think others.

The mead he’d donated to us was the Monaick and recognizable as such, after all I have drunk a fair amount of the stuff at various Witchfests.

But still completely surreal. My local real ale come Goth pub donating shots of mead on a Friday night. What great start to the weekend, and perhaps the Mead revival is not inconceivable.

Next time I’ll order a pint.

Moniack Mead (£7.99, 75cl, 14.6%)

More than most Moniack is the mead I’ve drunk to the point I can recognise the taste.

From numerous bottles drunk while campaigning at Witchfest, to bottles bought in odd Delhi’s it seems surprisingly common for all it has travelled from the Castle at Inverness. The website reads thus:

Moniack Mead is made from honey and is a delicious well-balanced drink It is probably the oldest alcoholic drink in the world and has always been a wine for special occasions, especially during wedding celebrations, hence the name honeymoon. Nowadays we recommend you drink it as an aperitif. In Summer it may be chilled and in winter mulled.

And it’s a pleasant enough tipple, but perhaps it has grown a little routine.

Moniack is sweet but not too sweet, perhaps slightly too cloying but compared to the other common mead Lindisfarne it’s a blessing.

Still I’m confident it’s a Mead I’ll return to, and ideally I’ll do more than drive past the castle to visit the Meadery at some stage.

The Meads of Dorset

What a strange weekend, and a bimbling odyssey across the coastal belt of Dorset, not so much in search of Mead but happenstance conspiring to put it within my grasp on multiple occasions.

From the wee town of Wareham and a delightful tipple in the local pub, the Kings Arms, to a deli in Corfe Castle selling for some reason the Scottish Mead Moniack. I mean why Scottish mead in Dorset?

Even the local National Trust shop was selling mead, a relabelled version of the Cornish friar’s vintner’s mead. Such an excess of diversity leads to indecision, and at £16 for a 500ml bottle common sense suggested that a national trust label doesn’t add that much to the flavour.

Finally in the tourist ghetto of Lulworth Cove a country wine shop devoted to English wines and of course meads. Despite being an independent retailer the shop seemed almost exclusively devoted to the Lyme Bay ranges of both wines and meads, with the suggestion that perhaps that they occasionally stocked the awesome Lurgashall.

Still with free tasting and five varieties in stock, as an advocate of Mead drinking I think they do fine work, and their brochure hints of details that may deserve a return trip.

• Special Mead (honey only) £8.95


• Christmas Mead (Honey & Brandy) £11.50


• Traditional Mead (Grape & Honey) £8.95


• Millennium Mead (Whiskey) £11.50


• West Country Mead £8.95

So what is it that makes Dorset the heart of the Mead country? Do Dorset folk still maintain medieval tastes? or do retired folk settling in cute chocolate box cottages acquire a sweet taste in their latter years?

Or is mead simply part and parcel of the tourist trail, a hint of Olde England, a memento to take home for the mantelpiece or to slowly decay in the drinks cupboard until Christmas?

Still the first mead on the trail, the find in the pub suggests that Dorset folk do drink mead and perhaps a look at Dorset Camra, or the local beer festival may combine various musings.