Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [61]
I also discovered a box on the floor containing 16 bottles of mead, some of which were hand labeled. All seemed to be from about 1944, when Gayre was experimenting with various recipes as well as beginning his career working for military intelligence against Nazi Germany. I held this mead and thought of how only eight years earlier, in 1936, Gayre had met with Hitler in Berlin, Hitler having been interested in his ethnological ideas. Now it was August 1993 and I was sorting through several cysers, metheglins and melomels.
Most of the bottles were still intact, though a few had oozed part of their contents through failing corks and broken wax seals. My intent was to take a few photographs of these rare bottles and bring to the attention of Reinold and Marion the significance of what was in their basement.
Remaining mead from 1940s Mead Makers Meadery, Gulval, Cornwall
Over the years various castle residents may have squandered much of what had been there. Who was to know? Now only a few bottles remained.
As I took stock of the small inventory, Marion brought in a steaming plate of lightly sautéed chanterelle mushrooms, along with a complement of several wineglasses and a corkscrew. I was about to be immersed in mead heaven. Reinold joined us and invited me to open two bottles of melage mead.
The first was a 1948 melomel made by Mead Makers. The bottle had leaked. A quarter of its contents were gone, replaced with air. There was very little hope that the contents would be good. The cork disintegrated as I pried it out. To our astonishment the mead was not only drinkable, but quite good. It tasted very rich and dense, almost salty from the concentration of solids due to evaporation; it was very sweet, sherrylike and somewhat spicy in character. There was very little suggestion of oxidation and no acidification had taken place.
The next bottle we opened was a 1948 bottle of sack metheglin. It was in perfect condition. The aroma was herbal and honeylike. There was not the slightest evidence of oxidation. The label stated that the contents were no less than 14 percent a.b.v. The character of this sack metheglin was deep and complex; it was crystal clear, bearing no sediment. The aroma also expressed a slight lavender/herbal character. The taste mystified me. My mind continued to unravel the flavor. After several sips and savoring the long aftertaste, several characters unfolded themselves. I thought I could identify lavender, thyme, rosemary, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg, though they were all interwoven into one marvelous and unifying expression. Curiously, it was the aftertaste that really helped unravel the flavor for me. It still lingered 30 minutes later, and it was at that time that a rosemary-and-thyme (almost oregano-like) character became clearly evident.
I later learned from reading Gayre’s mead notes that the gruit (herbal mixture) from which metheglins were made consisted of those herbs I had perceived, as well as a long list of others.
A slight burnt and smoky flavor contributed to the overall character. I would guess that this might have been the result of certain root herbs such as orris (powdered Florentine iris, of which Gayre writes in one of his herbal books: “a most valuable ingredient in flavoring fine metheglin”) and of being aged in oak for a year or two before bottling. There was also a soft acidity blessing the overall character.
We tried no other meads, though I could hardly contain my desire. I noted that the melomels and hippocras and particularly the cysers all had deposits