Two years, one month and a day ago, in the dark of night I dug a hole. These dirty bottles inside the crate have never seen the light of day. The soil holds the deep chill of ancient bedrock inside the bottles and shades the mead from Mother Nature's fickle seasons in Northeast Georgia.
The Moody Spring as it's known today lies on the eastern slope of the first range of foothills of the Appalachians in South Carolina. Used for centuries by travelers from the piedmont to the Cherokee nation in North Carolina, this spring runs ice cold. Local legend tells of a hitchhiking ghost that appears in the evening fog during the change of the seasons at this spring, as cool westerly mountain air rushes down the slope to meet the warm air of the piedmont. The cold and lonely ghostly spirit of the hitchhiker is in this mead, a ghost in a bottle buried alive in Georgia; a traveler indeed.
Among the summer bounty in this part of the country is blackberry, a staple of the natural history. Fawns of the fauna with white spots fading begin to nip these berries from their thorny tangles in the flood plains of the ancient arteries of the Creek Indian nation long since extinct; but for a few old maps and the scuffle of artifacts under the hoof of the fawn, recently unearthed by the spring floods. These wild blackberries carry the tartness of their firm red youth into their sweet soft dark maturity through the summer, as does the cold mead hold the essence of the fruit. In the spring, the blossoms are busy with bees before the berries beckon the bucks and does and fauns, the nectar sucked from the very water and soil from the trickling stream so ancient as to have carved out this vast flood plain from well back into prehistory; these elements held in the hive and now bottled.
In the glass this melomel breathes, having held it's breath for two years, a month and a day. A few gentle swirls release the spirits held within, and the first taste is structured with oak tannin and a hint of vanillin, followed by the cool rush of blackberry and finished with the light bite of fermented honey, reminiscent of distant dreams of a distant land. As the glass is slowly sipped and half consumed, the character is still changing. A dryer tartness from the blackberry takes over for the oak and the memory of sweetness from the honey finishes each sip, with the oak now in a light aftertaste that urges the mouth to pour another glass. The hitchhiker is finally free.
Anyone else have a mead fantasy?
The Moody Spring as it's known today lies on the eastern slope of the first range of foothills of the Appalachians in South Carolina. Used for centuries by travelers from the piedmont to the Cherokee nation in North Carolina, this spring runs ice cold. Local legend tells of a hitchhiking ghost that appears in the evening fog during the change of the seasons at this spring, as cool westerly mountain air rushes down the slope to meet the warm air of the piedmont. The cold and lonely ghostly spirit of the hitchhiker is in this mead, a ghost in a bottle buried alive in Georgia; a traveler indeed.
Among the summer bounty in this part of the country is blackberry, a staple of the natural history. Fawns of the fauna with white spots fading begin to nip these berries from their thorny tangles in the flood plains of the ancient arteries of the Creek Indian nation long since extinct; but for a few old maps and the scuffle of artifacts under the hoof of the fawn, recently unearthed by the spring floods. These wild blackberries carry the tartness of their firm red youth into their sweet soft dark maturity through the summer, as does the cold mead hold the essence of the fruit. In the spring, the blossoms are busy with bees before the berries beckon the bucks and does and fauns, the nectar sucked from the very water and soil from the trickling stream so ancient as to have carved out this vast flood plain from well back into prehistory; these elements held in the hive and now bottled.
In the glass this melomel breathes, having held it's breath for two years, a month and a day. A few gentle swirls release the spirits held within, and the first taste is structured with oak tannin and a hint of vanillin, followed by the cool rush of blackberry and finished with the light bite of fermented honey, reminiscent of distant dreams of a distant land. As the glass is slowly sipped and half consumed, the character is still changing. A dryer tartness from the blackberry takes over for the oak and the memory of sweetness from the honey finishes each sip, with the oak now in a light aftertaste that urges the mouth to pour another glass. The hitchhiker is finally free.
Anyone else have a mead fantasy?
