Ye Olde Cornish Mead Wine

And a toast to the joys of feeding cats.

So a gift / reward / palovian incentive for feeding my friends / work mates pets in the form of 2 bottles of Mead, one big (75cl) and one small(37.5cl)

So a golden bottle with a screw tap lid and a legend reading:

Ye Olde Cornish Mead. The honeymoon drink. British produce

Clearly aimed at some sort of tourist market

A very dark coloured mead, almost like burnt sugar with a bizarre sweet smell, maybe even that of a sweet tea (or that’s the colour playing tricks on my mind). Perhaps a chemically confectionary smell?

The first sip is not as sweet as the smell, but has that odd chemical tange, and a slightly cloying after taste.


The website suggests what’s wrong here, the art of making mead doesn’t normally use a wine stock – philistines

Cornish Mead Wine. Combining a grape wine base with a
smooth honey flavour gives Cornish mead its distinctive taste.
Cornish mead is avalible in two strengths -
Cornish Mead Wine @ 15% ABV and
Cornish Liqueur mead @ 17 % ABV.

A couple of sips later it’s more palatable, but not great. It’s some while since I started with Harvest Gold but this isn’t much better / different. Perhaps another mead to try hot on a winters day.

Sorry Rachael

Aengus MacLeod Met

Ah Easter, seems like a plausible excuse to crack open a bottle of the sweet stuff, while listening to some classic Eurythmics.

This bottle has been gathering dust since last years Witchfest, and is brewed by that famous German Scot Aengus (well of course it is)

A bulbous bottle and a stopped cork lid implies I don’t need to drink all of this in one sitting, well we’ll see about that. I’m also looking forward to contrasting the taste with his 3 year aged version, so perhaps I’ll do both this weekend.

To an extent this German Mead might present the missing link between the Meads of the Celtic World (Brittany, Wales, Scotland, England) and the East (Poland. Lithuania) so although I’ve tasted this before, I’ve not done so with so many weird ideas in my head.

The scent is sweet with a spike, maybe a hint of a melomel, the mead is a rich but slightly pale gold, and the first sip is quite a crisp sweet bite. There is a hint of something else here almost a white wine taste, so I do wonder.

A surprising easy drink to perhaps guzzle, or simply a reflection of the mood I’m in. There’s an almost burnt aroma to the glass now, and the sweetness is quite subdued compare to more mundane mead.

Perhaps this is the secret of a particularity palatable mead, that to some extent the sweetness is hidden, or subdued enough that there other flavours come through. All in all though this bodes for a pleasant evening.