[QUOTE=BARGETTO, post:95, topic:130834]
Yes. You get two bags of mulling spices with each bottle of Mead. You can serve the Mead chilled without the spices or mulled with the spices. I recommend trying it both ways.
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I am very interested in trying this mulled. Do the spices come with recipes/instructions?
[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.
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Barleywines, wheat wines, and sake (rice wine) are completely different than honey wine (mead) and fruit wines. The former are beers (although the case for sake as a beer is debatable), whereas the latter are true wines. The main difference being that honey, grapes, and other fruit are natural sources of fermentable sugar, whereas grains need some sort of enzymatic activity to convert their starches to sugars.
English-style barleywines are somewhat sweet, as they tend to focus more on the flavors that are derived from the malted barley, whereas American-style barleywines tend to overload on the hops. If you were to age an American barleywine for a few years, the hop flavors and bitterness would begin to fade, and it would start to resemble an English barleywine.
As far as the manufacturing process goes, mead and barleywine have some similarities, mostly due to their high starting gravities (which is a measure of the amount of sugar available to the yeast before fermentation). High-gravity worts and musts need to be oxygenated thoroughly to allow for adequate reproduction by the yeast, thus allowing for proper attenuation (dryness). In mead, yeast nutrients are also added, but they aren’t usually necessary for beer because the grains provide plenty of nutrients.
Most beers are allowed to ferment as fully as possible; any residual sweetness is usually the result of unfermentable sugar (from higher mash temperatures) as opposed to an interrupted fermentation. With mead and wines, sweetness is usually obtained by interrupting the fermentation, either with sulfites to kill the yeast, or with distilled alcohol (as in fortified wines).
Regarding the finished product, malted grains have a very distinct flavor; think Whoppers brand candies. Hops will also add another dimension of taste/flavor that won’t show up in any other beverage. Mead will have residual flavors from the different types of honey used (similar to how different grape varieties yield different flavors in wine).
There is also braggot, which is a blend of mead and beer, melomel, which is a blend of mead and fruit wine, and metheglin, which is spiced mead. These blends can happen before or after fermentation; the effects on the final product are negligible. I am unsure, however, if mead mulled with spices is considered metheglin.
Hope this post clarified rather than confused the matter…
I love Bargetto’s Pinot Grigio. I noticed that it had undercurrent of spicy sweetness. I later learned that it is blended with a small amount of Gewurtztraminer. I was not crazy about the Chaucer’s fruit wines (Ollalieberry and Pomegranate), but I did not think they were syrupy sweet. I thought they both had sufficient acidity to balance the sweetness, but they were still sweet.
When it comes to dessert wine, I prefer port or madeira, but the mulled mead could be very nice on the deck during early speing in Ohio. I think I’ll wait and do some price investigation. The fruit wines were a great deal when offered. I live in a small town - not much variety for wine purchasing.
I’m a member of Chaucer’s wine club and these are fantastic bottles. if you’ve never had mead or flavored mead, get in on this deal ASAP. Their raspberry mead is something truly spectacular.
[QUOTE=BARGETTO, post:80, topic:130834]
To: Loweel and other interested Mead fans
CHAUCER’S MEAD is produced with a 10.5% alcohol level. Hence, it is meant to be consumed within one year of purchase. If the alcohol level was higher, we would expect it to keep it fresh honey flavors for longer.
Yes, it is from a different batch from the last offering. We hope you will enjoy this bottling. One thing that Mead lovers will note is that as the wine ages the fresh honey flavor becomes more of a bready, yeasty profile. Some may enjoy that flavor sensation, some may not.
Salute!
Marty Bargetto
President, Owner Cellars
Cellars
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How long is your mead aged before you release it?
The Chaucer MEad I bought and used within a month of buying - it was very yeasty - I did not like the yeastiness. Is there some way to tell how long the bottle has been at the store?
Okay. Having given the raspberry a try, I can say I don’t like it. I don’t like any fruit wine though (other than grape, of course), so I’m probably a bad judge of this. I liked the mead after a while because I enjoyed teasing out the honey flavors from the rest of the wine. Unfortunately with the raspberry, the honey is competing with the raspberry, and it doesn’t work very well for me. It’s pleasant, in a cocktail type of way. I wish I were on a beach somewhere with a cold bottle. I’m glad I purchased it, but only for the experience, not for the merits of the wines.
So bottom line: these are enjoyable drinks for a change of pace, but they are not fine wines.
Wicked, I bit. The crazy thing is I am currently making 5 gallons of mead. It has been fermenting for 25 days or so. Figured I should get some mead and try it before I drink my mead (though I need to let mine age for some time) just so I know what mead tastes like. Been making beer for the last year or so and saw a great deal on local honey. I hope this mead tastes good and I hope my simple mead tastes somewhat like it haha (I have a feeling mine might be very alcoholic). First WOOT purchase for me. GO WINE.WOOT!!!
[QUOTE=inflatablechair, post:102, topic:130834]
Barleywines, wheat wines, and sake (rice wine) are completely different than honey wine (mead) and fruit wines. The former are beers (although the case for sake as a beer is debatable), whereas the latter are true wines. The main difference being that honey, grapes, and other fruit are natural sources of fermentable sugar, whereas grains need some sort of enzymatic activity to convert their starches to sugars.
…
Hope this post clarified rather than confused the matter…
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Can it do both? 
I’m on the fence about calling mead “honey wine” much the same way I don’t like the term Barleywine or rice wine. To me, they’re individual products based on their source material.
Wine is a fruit-based fermented product.
Barleywine is a beer. A strong beer, but the ingredients are 100% beer.
Sake is a rice-based fermented product similar.
Mead is none of the above. The fermentation base is purely honey (vs. grain or fruit).
I know beer.woot ain’t gonna happen, but I’m curious what it is about the arcane laws we’re operating under that allow for the sale & shipment of Mead as “wine” and Sake as “wine” that would prohibit the shipment of Barleywine or high-gravity ales (e.g. Unibroue beers like La Fin Du Monde, Maudite, and Trois Pistoles). …other than the economics involved with shipping a product that weighs as much as mead and sells for 1/2 the price.
[QUOTE=simoco, post:108, topic:130834]
Wicked, I bit. The crazy thing is I am currently making 5 gallons of mead. It has been fermenting for 25 days or so. Figured I should get some mead and try it before I drink my mead (though I need to let mine age for some time) just so I know what mead tastes like.
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Unless your recipe specifically includes a post-fermentation step for neutralizing the yeast and back-sweeting, your homebrew mead is likely to be more like a dry champagne and bear little similarity to the Chaucer meads. I’ve been brewing myself for just over a year and “assistant brewer” to my pappy for over a decade (who’s got a few meads under his belt) and there are other brewers around here, too.
You might be able to eek out some ‘secrets’ from the Bargetto folks about their process for getting from fermentation to store-ready sweet-mead.
[QUOTE=JOATMON, post:73, topic:130834]
It also lets the winemaker build up his mailing list so he can spam you with junk mail: http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=1698593
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Posting here does not give any winemaker your “snail” mail address for a mailing list.
I like mead, I will give it a shot
[QUOTE=iByron, post:111, topic:130834]
Posting here does not give any winemaker your “snail” mail address for a mailing list.
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Link referenced was from a woot-off purchase where a user got an unsolicted mailing from Bargetto. Technically it’s not “junk mail” any more than those annoying calls from your credit card or mortgage company trying to upsell you on “banking products you might be interested in.” Legally it’s not telemarking because you actively formed a relationship with them.
In my case, the mortgage company I initially signed with sold my mortgage to Countrywide who call frequently with ‘offers,’ so even though I never explicitly signed paperwork with Countrywide and never signed up to get their crap, it was in the fine print of my closing documents (and I knew that the mortgage would likely end up with a different lender than I was signing with), Countrywide is exempt from my Do Not Call registry protection.
[QUOTE=iByron, post:111, topic:130834]
Posting here does not give any winemaker your “snail” mail address for a mailing list.
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Go read the thread before passing summary judgement. Buying the woot does give the winemaker your snail address.
Out of all the wine I’ve wooted, I’ve probably received 4 pieces of snail mail over a 2 year period. I think I can manage that.
[QUOTE=JOATMON, post:114, topic:130834]
Go read the thread before passing summary judgement. Buying the woot does give the winemaker your snail address.
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Posting = no
buying = maybe (I now get mail from 1 offering)
I’d be more belligerent and offended, but I have a cold. Again. So I wave my elderberries in your general direction
[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.
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Really, it surprises you? Haven’t you been paying attention?
[QUOTE=eyeslikesugar, post:57, topic:130834]
Yumm! Thank you! From a white wine girl, trapped in a red wine world; meade is lovely, and will be thoroughly enjoyed by me! =)
<3
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Glad to know I’m not the only one! I keep trying with the reds (as they are offered more often), yet haven’t quite developed into them fully yet. I’ve ordered these; however I’m afraid they’ll be too sweet like I found the ice wines to be.
[QUOTE=MannyFesto, post:117, topic:130834]
Really, it surprises you? Haven’t you been paying attention?
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Only vaguely. I am not the person responsible for food/wine purchases in our household. When I see something the primary purchaser might like, I point it out to him. As a result, I expect my wine.woot id block is probably the “no sale” color, whatever that is. (checking Oooo! I get credit for my other Woots on wine.woot. But I have no sales, I think, because I’m just the household recommender.) Usually when I’m suggesting something to the primary purchaser in the household, I do a little web research to see if I find it at a cheaper price in any of our usual places, and if not, I pass it along ot him and he purchases or not using his account.
So, no, I don’t pay much attention, but this is the first time I’ve noticed something that was obviously higher priced than we’ve ever paid for it. Of course, living in the bay area, we have the advantage of being close to many of the vintners and distributors. (As an example, it’s about an hour drive to get to the Chaucer folks, it appears – 40 minutes in good traffic.)
[QUOTE=nematic, post:116, topic:130834]
Posting = no
buying = maybe (I now get mail from 1 offering)
I’d be more belligerent and offended, but I have a cold. Again. So I wave my elderberries in your general direction
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I’d snicker here and make and evil face (but only TMR can do that face!). I’m laughing now. Let me just say here, since I’m up, that wine.woot or WD does protect you from all winemakers and winos. That EVIL man!! You can easily remove yourself from anyone’s (e-) mailing list. Still wish I had that devil face icon
JOATMON: In summary judgement: You are protected!!