We are delighted to report that our new Meadery became a fully-licensed winery on November 17, 2009! These licenses give us the right to start fermenting wines and meads for the purpose of commercial sale. Alas, this means we all have to wait until Thanksgiving or Christmas 2010 for our first release, but it's a winner! Our inaugural release is a semi-sweet habanero pepper mead, aged four months in french oak barrels previously used to age Yamhill County pinot gris. Meadmaker Chrissie is delighted with the results of barrel tasting the weekend of August 28-29: "this may be the best thing I have ever made."
Chrissie is something of a dabbler and a "mead anthropologist." I've been making mead as a homebrewer for more than 15 years, and am intrigued with the idea that mead is this common, joyous, ancient thread shared by all cultures and societies all over the earth, each with our own spin on wines made from honey. Grape juice mixed with honey, called pyment, is
a time-honored tradition in many countries, and here in Oregon's wine country you can count on pinot noir pyments coming from Kookoolan. A “melomel” is mead made with any combination
of honey and any kind of fruit juice, where the fruit juice is not just a
flavoring after the fact but is part of the fermentable must; apples, cherries, and apricots are three of the most popular blends. Nobody knows
the archaic words “sack” mead or “sack” wine (meaning strong alcohol and
sugar). Sherry-style, or liqueur-style, or dessert-wine style would be closer,
but I don’t think this vocabulary would compel anybody to try what I make. I
think Chartreuse and Drambuie liqueurs are the closest products
to my preferred style; Rabbit's Foot Meadery of Sunnyvale, California, is closest among American meads to what I hope to produce. The Polish make a mead that includes rosehips and rose
petals. Many European meads are aged for five years or more in oak barrels. The Ethiopians make a damned good mead that uses fragrant hot peppers.
The Azteks made something similar to mead using agave nectar and the fruit of
the prickly pear cactus (which I have made in the past when I lived in Arizona,
and that was really good too). The Picts, a particular tribe in Scotland, made
a mead with heather blossoms; heather bitters the nectar much as hops do for
beer, but in addition a wild fungus grows on the heather blossoms that produces
a slightly psychotropic effect on the drinker. Queen Elizabeth’s favorite mead
used bay leaves, thyme, rose petals, and lemon balm. I also have visions of a
Japanese-inspired cherry-blossom-infused mead that might be in the neighborhood
of plum wine, and would go well with Asian foods.
We also brew REAL Kombucha tea. If you've experienced the commercial kombuchas sold as soft drinks, then you are familiar with the way-too-sour, way-too-sweet, way-too-vinegary compromise required to legally sell kombucha as a soft drink. Natural, Real Kombucha is gently alcoholic at 1.5% alcohol. However, in the United States, soft drinks must contain 0.5% or less alcohol by volume. Anyone who has had an opened bottle of wine spoil in their kitchen knows that if you leave alcohol exposed to the air, the alcohol with chemically react with the oxygen, converting some of the alcohol to acetic acid (which is vinegar). By extending the kombucha "fermentation" to 30 days or more, the alcohol is removed from the kombucha by converting it to vinegar. The resulting brew has its sugar and acid out of balance, requiring the addition of more sugar; and has nasty vinegar off-flavors which need to be masked by the addition of aromatics such as fruit and herbal essences. Believe it or not, some commercial kombuchas are also pasteurized for shelf stability, killing off all the probiotic cultures!
Our Real Kombucha is fresh, tart, sweet, and vibrantly alive with probiotics, like kombucha is supposed to be. Everyone says it's the best kombucha they've ever tasted. Come and let us pour you a sample in our tasting room!
