Vine Line: Mead and My Honey

Keith Dalbec

America's culinary revolution has begun anew! Artisanal cheeses, long-lost heirloom vegetables, gourmet poultry and meat products, craft beers, local wines, and now mead, signify the rejection of TV dinners, industrial wine and beer, and artificial foods.

Undeniably, the first alcohol consumed by our species was from the accidental fermentation of diluted honey. Known as Mead, the earliest archeological evidence of this honey wine is from around 7000 B.C. in northern China. In northern Europe and Asia, where grapes did not flourish but honeybees did, Mead was the beverage of choice. Edinburgh, Scotland was the site of a great Mead Hall where manly warriors drank their courage. To promote health, happiness and prosperity, young newlyweds were given mead, thus the first month of marriage was the "honeymoon."

Drawn by the craft brewing scene and "interesting" culture of Asheville, Jason Russ sold his home brew business in Fairfax, Virginia to open Fox Hill Meadery near Marshall. Russ worked through about two hundred test batches over six years in Virginia before he was approved to go commercial.

I assumed that Mead would be syrupy and teeth aching sweet. Not so in the case of Fox Hill meads. They range from dry to semi-sweet. Many meads have about ten-percent unfermented sugar. Russ's meads run from one and one-half to two and one-half percent.

Fox Hill brews five different styles and produces about eight hundred cases per year. The Blackberry Honey Wine (the feds won't accept the name mead if it has fruit) was slightly sweet and was reminiscent of a local Muscadine or straight berry wine. The fruit meads are also called Melomel. The Ginger Apricot was a wakeup call — think kicked up Pad Thai to accompany this sweet spicy cool quaff. Jason's Spiced Mead, infused with cinnamon, allspice and orange peel would be great for a Holiday treat; you could heat it a little on a cold night. Spiced Mead is also known as Methegline, Old Welsh for medicine. It makes sense.

Fox Hill makes two traditional Meads; the regular is light and semi-sweet but the Special Reserve is the charmer. Most serious beer and wine drinkers would find something to get their teeth into with this dark, chewy, just off-dry sipper made with Pennsylvania buckwheat honey. All of the others are made with local tulip poplar honey. (If anyone knows a source for local buckwheat honey let Russ know — he prefers to use local honey and helps support efforts to protect the honeybee population).

Fox Hill Meadery has just come away with a Silver Medal for the Spiced Mead and a Bronze for the Special Reserve at the 2009 Mazer Cup Competition in Colorado. The Mazer Cup is the largest mead only competition in the world. There are twenty commercial meaderies in the United States, so competition was stiff. Not bad for the first time competitor who set out to be a craft beer maker. I think Fox Hill has found a good home in the beautiful rolling hill country north of Leicester.

Perhaps Henderson County apple farmers searching for new markets will someday make the connection: bees, honey, apples. Let's see, mix some apple blossom honey with apple juice and water, add yeast, and wait. There is a name for this brew, Cyser Mead, an old formulation.

Fox Hill Meads sell for around sixteen dollars per bottle and are gradually getting traction in local wine shops and bars. You can check out the website for a list of retailers and outlets at www.foxhillmead.com.