Here are some links to Chaucer.
Enjoy!
WRT how to drink it, we have it a few different ways. You can serve it warm, even mulled with spices, room temp, or iced. At certain times of year these bottles come with a hang tag with a little tea bag of mulling spices for free, that you can use when serving it warm.
We probably go through 15 or so bottles of this a year – we stock up when it goes on sale for 6.99 or whatever at Safeway. How it’s served really depends on the temperature – hot in the winter, cold with a strawberry garnish in the summer.
And yeah, I like the Ollallieberry wine they make a lot, too!
I mean the stuff is good, very drinkable as a dessert option – but unless they don’t sell it anywhere near where you live, this is not a good deal.
Ok… this is $2.88 cheaper than having it shipped from BevMo… so I guess it is somewhat cheaper in that regards. But if you’ve got a BevMo close by (or a Trader Joes where I’ve seen in for $10) you could just stop by and pick it up significantly cheaper. I’ve never tried the stuff (not into dessert-style wines), but I may stop by Trader’s this week and pick up a bottle just so I can try it if the reviews are favorable.
Looking forward to the winemaker (meadmaker?) comments this week. Should be interesting to learn more about this.
Q for the Barghetto folks:
I know these are NV, but are they the same “batch” as the last offering, or a different batch? How long will they keep?
Link to the last time it was offered (during a woot-off on the main site): http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=1310609
[QUOTE=damightyanteater, post:7, topic:130834]
Can someone tell me or point me in the direction of a mead primer. I don’t really know anything about it. How is it made, best way to consume, maybe even a cheap one that I can find at the speciality spirits store so I know what I’m getting into before wooting this.
thanks in advance.
[/quote]
[QUOTE=JOATMON, post:26, topic:130834]
Link to the last time it was offered (during a woot-off on the main site): http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=1310609
[/quote]
Yeah great… 22 pages of bs like wt f is this and other nonsense. At least this time we have a forum to talk about it.
[QUOTE=trinsf, post:3, topic:130834]
We drink a lot of this stuff, but I think we only pay like 8.99 a bottle at Trader Joe’s. Hmm! checking Yeah. It’s 9.99 on BevMo, and we regularly get it on sale for less than the Woot price. I’m surprised to see an offering over the market price at Woot.
[/quote]
Didn’t know TJ’s sold mead. I guess I’ll have to walk over there tomorrow and check it out. Thanks!
[QUOTE=alien88, post:29, topic:130834]
Didn’t know TJ’s sold mead. I guess I’ll have to walk over there tomorrow and check it out. Thanks!
[/quote]
I don’t think all the TJs sell it, only the ones that sell wine. In NY the TJs don’t sell beer, wine or liquor. I wonder if the Union Square TJ wine store sells it.
[QUOTE=Cesare, post:28, topic:130834]
Yeah great… 22 pages of bs like wt f is this and other nonsense. At least this time we have a forum to talk about it.
[/quote]
The only comments on topic were ones that we’ve already hashed out here: BevMo and Trader Joe’s has it cheaper, and it’s not great mead.
If you like sweet… I mean cloyingly sweet, then go for it. I’ve always been disappointed whenever I’ve tried this.
But then I’m spoiled… I make an effort to keep stocked with Lindisfarne (http://www.lindisfarne-mead.co.uk/) whenever I go to the UK to visit family. Now that’s a good mead!
Makes a great pre-wedding gift too, given the origin of the word honeymoon.
If only Woot could figure out a way of shipping us some Lindisfarne.
Hint hint…
– The Wren
[QUOTE=brockb, post:23, topic:130834]
Ok… this is $2.88 cheaper than having it shipped from BevMo… so I guess it is somewhat cheaper in that regards. But if you’ve got a BevMo close by (or a Trader Joes where I’ve seen in for $10) you could just stop by and pick it up significantly cheaper. I’ve never tried the stuff (not into dessert-style wines), but I may stop by Trader’s this week and pick up a bottle just so I can try it if the reviews are favorable.
[/quote]
It’s cheaper on Woot if you have to ship from BevMo, but if you can pickup at BevMo, then where is the price break on Woot! ??? That is strange, as normally I thought all Woots were lower than anywhere. Or are we missing a bottle? (The Port, hint, hint)
http://www.bevmo.com/productlist.asp?Ntt=Mead&Ntk=All&D=Mead&Nty=1
[QUOTE=TheWren, post:32, topic:130834]
If you like sweet… I mean cloyingly sweet, then go for it. I’ve always been disappointed whenever I’ve tried this.
– The Wren
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This is by no means not a dessert wine. And yes, it is certainly very sweet. However, I felt this was much less sweet than i expected for honey, and had a certain delicate flavor to it that teh sweetness was very much a part of.
Is it just me, or does that picture feel almost deliberately misleading? The raspberry bottle looks the same size as the other two, yet the description states that it’s a 500 mL as opposed to the 750 mLs. I suppose it’s clever, but it feels a bit disingenuous.
[QUOTE=thatguy314, post:34, topic:130834]
This is by no means not a dessert wine. And yes, it is certainly very sweet. However, I felt this was much less sweet than i expected for honey, and had a certain delicate flavor to it that teh sweetness was very much a part of.
[/quote]
How does it compare to a barleywine Barley wine - Wikipedia
Obviously this doesn’t have the grains or hops so those flavors won’t be there.
[QUOTE=alien88, post:29, topic:130834]
Didn’t know TJ’s sold mead. I guess I’ll have to walk over there tomorrow and check it out. Thanks!
[/quote]
Well, you probably won’t find it this time of year. TJ’s sells it seasonally. We can normally find October-December, and by this time of year, it’s usually tapered off. At least, that’s my memory of it. Usually when we see it in stock, we buy them out of it. Really, I’m not kidding that my sweetie is fond of it!
Mmmm. Maybe. People have mixed all sorts of things together over the years. But the homebrewers I’m familiar with who follow traditional methods add the fruit to the honey while fermenting (or spices, in the case of metheglins), not ‘fortify’ the mead afterwards.
That’s always been one of the issues I have with commercial meads. But then I’ve never found one that I feel is anywhere as good as the homebrews I’ve tried. And Chaucer’s in my experience is a pretty standard commercial mead.
[QUOTE=Cesare, post:36, topic:130834]
How does it compare to a barleywine Barley wine - Wikipedia
Obviously this doesn’t have the grains or hops so those flavors won’t be there.
[/quote]
Barley wine is for the most part a completely different beast. It’s really just a very strong beer that uses champaign yeast to get to a higher alcohol content.
From what I know a lot of dryer meads use champaign yeast, and barleywine is achieved by taking a high gravity beer that has been partially fermented and as the beer yeast starts to die you toss in some champaign yeast which are less tolerant of starting gravity but have a higher alcohol tolerance.
I’ve never thought of barley wines being sweet as a rule (in fact I’d say a well balanced one often isn’t particularly sweet–you balance the sugars you put in with the amount of alcohol you expect to produce), but they have a dry, sour, “grapey” flavor that I often associate with champaign often dry champaign) though many tend to have some residual sweetness. This I know is very sweet, but balanced. It’s not carbonated. Mead needs to be aged for a while, BWs are (depending on the beer) one of the few beers you can age b/c of their high alcohol content. While they require more aging than most beers, they require a much more moderate aging than mead or wine.
Also beer brewing is a very different process (though it uses a lot of the same materials). Honey’s already fermentable where as barley/grains are not so a lot is involved there that I don’t want to get into because I don’t have much experience with mashing.
I don’t know if I answered your question…
[QUOTE=Cesare, post:36, topic:130834]
How does it compare to a barleywine Barley wine - Wikipedia
Obviously this doesn’t have the grains or hops so those flavors won’t be there.
[/quote]
It’s nothing like a barleywine in flavor, as the only fermentable in here is honey…very different than barley. Not to mention, many barleywines will have a very significant addition of hops…making a more balanced flavor between bitter and sweet.