Just cracked a bottle of this tonight to give it try and see what's what. $9 USD from Kroger supermarket.
I'll probably do this over a couple of posts, because it's late and it'll be easier.
So first off, it's a very very light in colour, no indication as to whether the main ingredient is varietal or blend, although my guess is blend or I'd imagine there'd be note of it otherwise.
Bottle is stopped by a traditional cork with some kind of wax seal in the top. Not sure if the waxy seal is decorative or serves a purpose, but they need to lose it, if you can't get it all out you end up with bits of wax in the mead, which are annoying to have to pick out.
The Final Gravity was tested at 1.022 (image below) so it's on the top end of sweet. Alcohol content is listed as 10% ABV on the bottle I had no way to confirm this. pH is 3.2.
Disclaimer, I'm not a sommelier!!!
The first test of the mead was at room temperature; I'll be honest, I thought at the time I must have a cold or something, because this smelled a lot like a white wine than a traditional mead, and to be honest both my wife and I thought the same... medium sweet white wine, something akin to a sweet Zinfandel or lambrusco etc, but either way, it was sweet, but nothing like the Chaucer I had before; It's definitely more drinkable than that.
So I thought, if it's like a white, I'll chuck it in the fridge for a couple of hours and try it again.
So here I am a couple of hours later....
The nose is still really really light! It's definitely citrus and floral notes in the initial tastes, but it's almost underwhelming, and has an alarmingly short yet exceptionally clean finish. But the flip side is, it goes down really easily and smoothly, and you could serve this with a light meal (salad or something) to your friends and in my entirely non-expert opinion, they'd not raise any questions about it being different.
So I guess to sum it up, the main reason I don't like it, is not because it's bad, because it's really not that bad, but more because it's so much like wine, and for my money if I wanted wine, I'd buy a bottle of wine, but I wanted mead; and although that's technically what I got, it wasn't what I was looking for. I guess that all goes towards my last point which was; if I'm buying a bottle of wine that tasted like this, was it worth $9....
I don't want to be too harsh on the drink, like I said this bottle will be consumed for sure (the chaucer went down the sink); lots of people will buy it; drink it; enjoy it. I'd even go as so far as to say it was worth the $9, even though to my mind/mouth thought it lacked personality, and my nose thought it was uninspiring aromatically, it is nevertheless, inoffensive and easy to drink.
Alas, still not the elusive mead I'm looking to fall in love with, however so my search continues.
Hope you found this useful
Cheers
Tony
