[CH] FW: (Washington) Mead-- Nectar for Quaffing
Karen Oland (koland@staffingtech.com)
Sun, 13 Oct 2002 19:45:56 -0400
http://www.yakima-herald.com/cgi-bin/liveique.acgi$rec=57275?home
Mead-- Nectar for Quaffing
Published in the Herald-Republic on Wednesday, September 11, 2002
By THOMAS P. SKEEN
BLETHEN FAMILY NEWSPAPERS
Long ago in a place far away -- pre-historic Mesopotamia is a likely suspect
-- some hunter-gatherer stuck his hand in a tree hollow on his annual
honey-collecting rounds.
But during this particular year, rainwater had flooded the beehive inside
the tree and mixed with the honey. Then wind-borne wild yeasts had done
their part to ferment the concoction.
The hunter-gatherer tasted what was in his hand, liked the sweet substance
and licked it again -- and again and again -- until the buzz he sensed
wasn't coming from whatever bees might have been hanging around.
Thus the honey wine called mead was discovered.
Or so says Ken Rehkopf, cellarmaster of Bonair Winery near the Yakima Valley
town of Zillah. The winery is among few in Washington that, along with
making premium European-style red and white wines, also makes unconventional
commercial wines from things other than vinifera grapes.
Bonair sticks to making meads, and owner Gail Puryear, who makes the
vinifera wines, leaves the mead making to Rehkopf.
"It's the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man," said Rehkopf, whose quick
wit, white beard, ruddy complexion and slightly Falstaffian build hints at
his role as the beer, wine and spirits guildmaster for the Society of
Creative Anachronism's Kingdom of An Tir, otherwise known as the Pacific
Northwest.
Rehkopf, who is given to quoting lines from the movie "Monty Python and the
Holy Grail," started making meads in 1968, when he was a member of the
medieval culture- and martial arts-loving society's chapter in New Jersey.
Most Westerners think of mead as a beverage quaffed by Norse and Celtic
tribes to work up the courage for pillaging and plundering and to celebrate
successful raids afterward, as inferred in an anonymous verse posted in
Bonair's country English Tudor-style tasting room:
"If it was good enough for ancient Druids
Running naked through the woods
Drinking strange fermented fluids
Then it's good enough for me."
But its origins, according to Rehkopf and histories written about mead, was
most likely during the dawn of civilization in the Fertile Crescent area of
the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. Ancient Greeks called mead
ambrosia and described it as the "nectar of the gods."
"As the human migration moved, so did mead," said Rehkopf. "You didn't have
to figure out how to make it; it just happened."
When humankind settled down and became agrarian -- which in Rehkopf's theory
of human history occurred so ingredients for beer and wines could be
cultivated more conveniently -- mead fell out of favor among the masses
because barley and grapes were more plentiful than honey and far easier to
ferment.
Bonair, which Puryear started in 1985, made its first commercial mead in
1996, a year when a killing freeze had devastated many vineyards in eastern
Washington.
"It was a bad year and we needed something to ferment, and we needed to make
a sweet dessert wine," said Puryear, a former Toppenish elementary school
principal.
The first batch was made with honey from hives placed in the Yakima Valley's
sprawling peppermint and spearmint fields. That choice turned out to be a
mistake.
Puryear, who has since learned that the right choice of honey is to good
mead what quality grapes are to premium wine, said fermented mint "expresses
itself as menthol and eucalyptus."
Said Rehkopf: "It tasted like triple-strength Listerine."
Nevertheless, Bonair sold its first batch of mead, all 400 gallons. And
after trying other types of honeys, Rehkopf and Puryear settled on fireweed
honey from the north Cascades for a base mead fermented to a point where it
has little sweetness. To that is added snowberry honey from Montana, which
adds back a light sweetness that allows the essences of the flowers from
which the honeys were derived to come through in aroma and taste.
Rehkopf now makes a total of 1,500 gallons of mead a year bottled under the
Bonair label -- a straight mead and, in keeping with Druid days of
celebration, Summer Solstice Mead and Winter Solstice Mead, all for about
$10 a bottle. The summer mead is blended with fermented black cherry juice
from the Yakima Valley. Teas made from cloves and cinnamon are added to
flavor the winter mead, which Puryear said he likes best heated a glass at a
time in a microwave oven to ward off the chill.
Bonair makes another 3,500 gallons of organic mead flavored with a tea
brewed from sticks of the gesho tree, which grows in Ethiopia and gives the
mead a dash of tartness. Batches are sold under contract only to Saba Tej
Co., a New Jersey firm that markets them to a large population of Ethiopians
(tej is their word for mead) living in Northeast states.
Coming out this fall, pending routine federal approval of Bonair's label, is
Chili Mead, complete with a red chili pepper immersed in each bottle to
impart a light, spicy heat to the pale yellow fluid.
"It has the essence of chili," Puryear said after sampling from a bottle
filled and sealed with a cork a year ago. "A blend of sweet and hot, you
know, yin and yang."
Puryear said it's an attempt to break into the "huge untapped market" of
Hispanics living and working in the Yakima Valley.
Will he and Rehkopf succeed, thus furthering the ancient beverage's reach to
New World populations?
"Well," said Puryear, "there's a chili beer out there."
* Thomas P. Skeen, the regional wine writer for the Blethen Family
Newspapers, can be reached at (509) 525-3300 or by e-mail at
tskeen@ubnet.com.
About Bonair Winery
and Other Mead-Makers
Bonair Winery is one of at least three commercial mead-makers in Washington.
The tasting room, in which Bonair's vinifera grape wines also are available,
is at 500 S. Bonair Road near Zillah, southeast of Yakima. Hours are 10 a.m.
to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday and
Saturday. The telephone number is (509) 829-6027 and the Web address is
www.bonairwine.com.
On Oct. 12, Bonair will host a mead fair in connection with a rapier
tournament featuring dueling Society of Creative Anachronism fencers. A
schedule of events is pending.
In the Snohomish County town of Sultan is Sky River Meadery, which makes
only meads. Appointments are requested for tours, and a tasting room is open
Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The meadery is at 32533 Cascade
View Drive. The telephone number is (360) 793-6761; the Web address is
www.skyriverbrewing.com.
Ambrosia by Kristy is another mead-only business, started in the Seattle
area in 1997 by Kristy Anderson. The meadery is not open to the public. It
maintains a Web site at www.amead.com.