Redstone Honey Wine with Juniper Berries

Brewed by Redstone Meadery
Style: Mead
Boulder, Colorado USA

Bottle, courtesy Tony at Oldsmar Tap House. Clear golden pour, no head or lacing. Bright honey aromas, sugary sweet, brown sugar, pears. Sweet honey flavors, some distant citrus, fairly tasty. Sweet but not offputting, good for dessert I suppose. Can’t drink too much of it, though.

Sample@ World Beer Expo: WTF. This tasted like house sake mixed with apple juice.

Clear gold in color with soft sweet honey aromas that softly layer on hints of wood and gin. Dry tannic honey and citric hay-like flavors throughout. Airy body, dry, semi-sweet finish. Nice experiment here that seems to work well...

Appearance is a very pale yellow w/ hint of blush. Aroma is Kool Aid with a hint of dirty socks. Flavor is a tad more aggressive than aroma but still mostly Kool Aid with a subtle juniper. Palette is too thin with a weird finish. Not actually bad, just a little boring.

From the bottle as part of a mead flight at Sunset Grille, 11/17/07.
Clear straw to pale gold, almost a chardonnay-like color, but with a hint more orange tones. Fully diminishing cluster of bubbles and flimsy legs left behind.
Aroma of dry, powdery sugar and old, plasticy vanillin extract. Little in the way of honey emanating in the nose, almost a straw-like dryness. Flavor is papery-astringent juniper twigs, in flavor and in texture. Not particularly flavorful, yet tremendously drying. Watery, straw-steeped-in-water sort of effect (must be the alfalfa) that is flimsy, not complex at all (I get barely any mead from this, just touches of light yeast dryness, vanillin and juniper). The only sweetness is a cheap, alcopop like candy/sugar. Stale and watery, though not sharp and fuselic for the 12 abv. Large, overly expansive bubbles further harry the palate and break up the flavors. In my mind, an analogy to beer makes this a spice/herb/vegetable beer that concentrates too much on the spices, letting slide the beer aspect. And even the spicing does not seem authentic and particularly well-done. Just atrocious.

9/1/07 Tasting at Malt & Vine, Redmond, Wa. Aroma is of true honey, just like smelling from a bucket. Appearance is a hazy straw color. Flavor is cider tangy, sweet, with a slightly earthy tone. Mouthfeel is creamy, not syrupy, with a slight tingle to it.

Cobalt blue bottle with a ceramic flip-top. Pours a pale straw gold with no head. This is a still mead. Light, pleasant aroma of honey. The flavor is interesting. It starts out with a nice, light honey flavor. Then, the juniper berries arrive on the scene and the taste is quite distinctive. The combination of the light honey sweetness and the flavor of the juniper berries is very nice. Light, lingering sweetness at the finish. Different, and very enjoyable.

This medium-dry metheglin is fermented by Montrachet yeast, flavoured with juniper berries and made from a mix of orange blossom and desert blossom honey. Presentation: Cobalt-blue flip-top bottle. Pours a clear light gold. 12% ABV. Nose: Caramel and fresh honey sweetness, some generic fruit and more honey. Taste: Starts with a clear semi-sweet floral honey taste, progressing to a juniper-influenced middle and a short, dry, slightly spicy finish. Overall: Excellent. Not too sweet, well-balanced, with just the right amount of juniper.