I took this picture a couple nights ago, just for my own entertainment. But I'll share it with you guys, because it's "Knock Your Socks Off" amazing. It's a twenty-one year old mead that I created from locally grown honey.
Back in early 1994 my wife and I were playing in the hills near Valyermo, when we came across an apiary. We decided to knock on the door and see what was up. There was one guy there. The hills around Valyermo were a lonely place back then, so he was more than eager to chat and to show us around. Did you know what a strange place an apiary is? Bees all over! Buzzing around, piled high in the window sills... this place was the real deal. He had 55 gallon drums filled with honeycomb from all sorts of flowers. I can't even remember all the exotics. My favorite was the sage, it isn't too sweet, and I love the spiciness. We bought quite a bit of honey that day.
That was at the height of my beer brewing mania (full mash, yeast farmer, petri dishes, the works). It made sense to try my hand at mead. I whipped up a batch, and after several months I bottled it. The date on the bottles is December 1, 1994. I marked all my bottles back in those days. After six months, I sampled a bottle. YEUCH! My mead was a hideous, cloyingly sweet syrup. The experiment was a bust. Soon thereafter, I was bottling some beer and needed bottles. I poured the mead down the drain and reused the bottles for the beer.
That would have been the end of the story, but about a year later I found a couple forgotten cases of the mead in the bottom of a closet. I was curious, and cracked open a bottle. HOLY COW! After eighteen months of conditioning, this mead was the most delicious, luxurious nectar that a brewer could ever hope to create! Amazing! So I carefully set aside the remaining bottles. Over the years I would forget about it, stumble across it, and then help myself to another bottle. Last week I ran across a bottle in the back refrigerator. After drinking the glass in the picture, I think there's only one bottle left. I'll let it sit there for a few months... or years... and then I'll drink it and it will be gone forever.
Mead is the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man, probably first discovered in an upturned bee hive that had filled with rainwater and fermented. The thirsty cavemen drank the sweet liquid, got high, and humans have been chasing the dragon ever since. Bees have long been associated with fertility and the sweetness of life. During the medieval times, a bride and groom were sent out after their wedding with enough mead to last them for one full moon. It was believed that the mead would imbue them with fertility and virility. From this custom we've derived the modern term, "honeymoon."
Prosit!