Chouchen

[Sveinne]

I bought a bottle of Honey Wine Produced and bottled by Warenghem - Brittany - France. (Imported by Normandie Import Corp. Portland OR.) Product of France. The bottle reads:

"Chouchen is the genuine Celtic name of this Honey Wine. This first apparances of Chouchen in Brittany date back to middle of the III century B.C. The production region of this Chouchen is the true Celts region of Brittany. Brittany has conserved a great Celt tradition and each year an International Celtic music festival is organized in Brittany."

13% alcohol.

I was surprised to find that the wine does not taste at all like honey wine, but like grapes. It is just a tad sweet, not enough for my liking, and it has a sour tang to it that is unpleasant. It smells like wine made from grapes as well. I tried to do what the Romans used to do (I believe) and added some honey and nutmeg to it to make Hippocras. It still had a sour tang to it but was a bit more palatable.

I realize I have a very unsophisticated palate and I don't describe the wine in terms most experts would use, but I'm trying to learn. Is it common for honey wine/mead to develop a fermented grape-like taste with no grapes added? The very reason I was so drawn to the first mead I ever tasted was that it was sweet, and tasted like honey, not grapes. I definitely want to avoid this grape taste in my meads.

 

[jab]

"Chouchen is the genuine Celtic name of this Honey Wine. This first apparances of Chouchen in Brittany date back to middle of the III century B.C. The production region of this Chouchen is the true Celts region of Brittany. Brittany has conserved a great Celt tradition and each year an International Celtic music festival is organized in Brittany."

Heh, sounded like a bunch of marketing baloney to me. I started researching it and unfortunately most of the sites were in French which I do not speak/read.

However, thanks to the babblefish, I think I may want to give this Chouchen a try. As this link explains:

(Translated from the French) " Hydromel, drink of the gods, drink of all the orgies."

Dude! I'm there!

http://www.brittany-shops.com/index_fr.php?rayons=2,41

 

[Sveinne]

;D So watered down mead was the drink of the Gods? This "goddess" wants hers sweet and rich. Er...that seems to apply to other areas of life too!

 

[hedgehog]

just a though

I don't know if it will help, but you might want to let the chouchen "breathe" a bit. I had a bottle of Bun Ratty "Meade", which is a grape wine with honey dumped in too, and when I first tasted it, it was pretty nasty stuff. I had kept it in the fridge before I opened it and it tasted like a cheap Chardoney, all grape and bitter with lots of burn. I was seriously disappointed, and I left the glass sitting on the table for a few minutes. By then, it had cooled to room temp and aired out a bit. It was actually quite good then, the honey taste and sweetness had come out and that nasty grape bite was gone. The burn was still there a tad, but it is 12% after all. Anyhow, just a thought, maybe it will help cause a happy demise to your bottle of chouchen.
by the way.. I did some nosing around and found several Welsh pages on chouchen, but one in English mentions using apple cider, honey, and grapes..

 

[Dan McFeeley]

;D So watered down mead was the drink of the Gods? This "goddess" wants hers sweet and rich. Er...that seems to apply to other areas of life too!

The French word hydromel is derived from the Greek language which suggests a very old tradition of meadmaking in France. "Hydromel" is a compound word from the Greek words for water and honey, in other words, a fermented honey must.

"Chouchen" is simply the Breton word for mead. That means it can be almost anything, just like the English word mead. I've had chouchen from Brittany, and the ones I've tried didn't taste of grape. Maybe Sveinne's chouchen had wine added to it, or had been fermented as a pyment. Generally, the Breton tradition for making chouchen is a combination of heather and buckwheat honeys, along with other blends to round out the flaovrs and add complexity. Heather and buckwheat are the base that the chouchen maker works with.

 

[Sveinne]

The bottle doesn't say "Mead" it says "Honey wine." And there is nothing to indicate that it's been mixed with grape wine. So I was expecting just that, a wine made from honey that didn't taste like grapes. I've seen lots of bottles that say right on the label, something like, "White wine mixed with honey."

We did open the bottle while it was at room temp and poured it right out. And we sipped it through the evening, added ice, and it really didn't get much better. But as I've said, I don't really have a sophisticated palate so what others may think is good, might just taste like sour grapes to me.

I've read more recent descriptions of Hydromel as a "diluted" mead, so I guess I confused diluted with watered down.

All I know is that after drinking that delicious Missouri Mead from Pirtle, that actually tasted like honey, I was expecting something similar.

Thanks for all the input! I'm going to continue to try different types of commercial mead as I wait for my first batch to age to perfection.

 

[artmc]

The vendors website is here: http://www.distillerie-warenghem.com (page is available in both English & French).


A simple review is here: https://www.honeywine.com/ordering/detail.asp?MeaderyID=132&CustomerID=&TransactionID=


They make 2 types of mead, whiskey, apple 'cider' and a few other things.


Also if you gonna order it and have "issues", maybe try http://www.liquidsolutions.ws
or http://www.liquidsolutions.biz . Though shipping is a killer...


As far as I can tell from the website and the bottles I seem to keep giving away as gifts, this is a pretty straight forward mead. I still have one bottle of the Oak Aged left, and may open it soon.



* art *