Lyme Bay Westcountry Mead

So last weekend after an eclectic pub crawl around South London, I ended up in Borough Market a wee bit merry and in a foody mood. Never a cheap combination.

After a certain amount of investigation I bought myself half a kilo of Stilton from the Neals Yard dairy and some Mead from the New Forest cider company who seemed to be the only stall in the place to carry the Amber nectar, from the Lyme Bay range. Ok I admit it, I bought a wee bottle of cider too, but there was an excuse. I'd promised to buy my Dad some Mead in exchange for the Stilton, and it seemed rude not to buy some cider too, after he got talking to the proprietor.

The Stilton didn’t last very long, and god was it good. Cholesterol is something that happens to other people, and the pork steaks in Stilton were worth dying for..

The Mead lasted the week, at least until a small posse of people appeared round my flat to play board games, and I wanted to offer them something more delicate that the Harvest Gold I was drinking, as their first initiation into Mead.

So even after Harvest Gold, the West County Mead was pretty sweet. After the sweetness there’s a strong taste of honey, and the scent to match so it’s quite nice but its sweetness does it a disservice.

Not a bad tipple, I’ll finish the bottle tomorrow and ruminate more, but nothing earth shattering. So I think I’ve failed in attracting new drinkers to the cause. At least this time.

Pork Pies and Mead (part I)

This part noting the absence of any mead drinking, but plenty of pork pies eating.

In an effort to escape London and forget the guilt associated with not attending my cousin's wedding my sister and I headed towards Lincoln, for no more reason that Lincoln is apparently a place you go to, and is on the way to nowhere else.

By the random routes we travel, we stopped in Melton Mowbray to test the pork pies, and to hear a tale of the history of the pork pie from the nice lady in the local cheese shop (the Melton Cheese Board).

So the story went, Melton used to be famous for cheese and specifically Stilton from the nearby village of Stilton (cunning name). Apparently some enterprising chap took the left over whey from the cheese making and started making special pies.

Having already devoured a delightful pork pie topped with Stilton from ‘ye olde pork pie shop’ this seemed like an entirely plausible story. My interest in Stilton and Mead having already been piqued an idea started to form (to follow in part II).

But is the story true? Wikipedia describes an authentic pie thus:

The Melton Mowbray Pork Pie uses uncured meat, giving the meat in a Melton pie a grey colour. Hand formed with no mould, a Melton Mowbray pie also commonly has a hand-formed crust. This style of production gives the Melton Mowbray pie a slightly irregular in shape form after baking, as with any hand-made pie.

So not a mention of Stilton then? The Pork Pie Appreciation Society doesn’t talk much of the history of the pork pie, but is well worth a browse simply for the surreal nature of life. Local food heroes mentions the use of Whey, and a more obscure internet site reads thus:

A major bi-product of the milk used to make Stilton is whey and this turned out to be an excellent food source for pigs, thus the dairies began keeping pigs. With a use being needed for the pork, the pork pie developed along with other pork products and Melton Mowbray became home to both the pork pie and Stilton cheese, two of the most renowned products in England!

And the view that Stilton and Pork Pies go hand in hand, is reinforced by the discovery of Mead in the Cheese Shop. An Eglantine mead that is entirely unfamiliar to me.

So Stilton, Pork pies and Mead, It’s all interconnected if only I could figure out why.

Stilton and Mead part I

On a recent trip to the Hive, I had the delight of stumbling upon some tasting notes for the drinking of Mead. They suggested that the Mead in question went well with a Strong Stilton, and despite the Mead in question having been long ago drunk here are my first thoughts.

The Stilton in question was the strongest I could find at the evil corporate superstore that was open at the time, and I need to try this again with a cheese more interesting. The Meads were both Harvest Gold and Norfolk, which I had on hand from the previous nights drinking.

The taste of the Stilton was a very bitter, pungent contrast to the Meads and the difference was very interesting, and incredibly intense. Intense enough that I broke the two up with bread on most attempts. Equally I’m not sure the two complimented each other in any way, which may have been a reflection of both meads being sweet and sickly (and cheap).

So not a stunning success, but a clear path to a 2nd attempt with a cleaner drier Mead, and a subtler less homogenised Stilton. For now the best accompaniment to mead seems to be more mead.