Apis Póltorak Jadwiga

Brewed by Spółdzielnia Pszczelarska Apis
Style: Mead
Lublin, Poland

No head. Deep amber body. Intense sweet rounded alcoholic aroma of apple, raisins, and honey. Mild, velvety apple, raisins, and honey taste. Notes of vanilla, wood, and smoke. Silkily smooth mouthfeel. Prunes and dried fruit. Kind of like a good port. Some alcohol heat, but not much alcohol taste. Incredible. Far and away the best mead I’ve ever had. (0.75l bottle at RBNAG’07, purchased at a honey shop in Krakow. For best results, let it rest in the glass for 10-15 minutes to let the alcohol fumes drift away. If you do that you’ll start to wonder if this isn’t quite possibly the best drink there is, beer, mead, or otherwise.)

Courtesy of after4ever and shared with after4ever and bitbucket. Pours a rich deep amber. The aroma is huge with sweet honey, red wine tannins, some mild alcohol and hints of wood. The mead enters thick, chewy and sludgingly sludgy. The honey hits first then it is followed by a quick burst of red wine tannins then very sweet honey and a hint of wood. It ends with honey, sugar and faint alcohol. I also am starting to get mild dark fruity esters. This is a thick product leaving behind sweetness and honey behind far into the after taste.

Poured from a 750 ml bottle. Glowing amber appearance; a thin syrup. Honey, pineapple, and burnt toffee aroma; fried ice cream slathered with a rich maple reduction. Intensely and impossibly sweet, but within reason, still, somehow. Flavor dances with a tangy, bright, hot rhythm; syrupy honey, coconut milk, almond frosting. Forceful and soft, and far from one-dimensional; trills of watermelon and canteloupe ring out brightly and quickly over the top. Toffee candy and pineapple sugar bring it back in the finish, concluding an extended, viscous, and sticky texture that penetrates every corner of the mouth. Pushes heat out the nose; graham and tanned marshmallow linger indefinitely. The exemplar of sugary overkill somehow rendered pleasant. A regal, luxurious experience all around, even if its sweetness bears a little heavy for my taste.

Wow. The aroma on this is so cloyingly sweet and sherried port, kind of sharp. Fantastic aroma. Taste is sweet honey with a nectar-like quality. Lingers very nicely, if developing a somewhat simple syrupy flavor. Very, very nice. My first example of a mead. Wow. Can you really beat this?

Bottle shared by foofaa. Pours a medium orange/amber color with no head. Aroma of honey, alcohol, some floral hints. Syruppy sweet. Flavor is a lot of honey, heavy on the booze. Very tasty, but definitely a sipper!

750, corked and foiled. Pours syrupy dark burnished amber with golden highlights. Gargantuan big daddy tarantula legs up the sides of the snifter on the swirl--holy cow. Sharp boozy nose, especially at first. Then caramel, vanilla, honey, and floral notes creep in. Amazingly three dimensional aromatics profile, constructed seemingly entirely out of sugar. Thick, viscous, tongue-drowningly gloppy body. Delectable goo. Complex woody, floral, and arrayed sugar taste notes (see above from the nose). Lingering sticky sweet finish. This stuff is so good you want to stick your fingers in it and pick your nose.

rbesg06, bottled. clear amber, quite bright, flat. port-like aroma, a bit musty, vanilla and honeycomb. very sweet and sticky but in a good way, lacking any flaws, would go well on ice cream

Shared bottle courtesy of foofaa. Poured a medium orange color with no head. Aromas of honey, berries, and alcohol. Tastes of honey and berries. Sweet. One to drink slowly by the fireplace.