A Flowery Song

Background: Well fancy that, a meadery practically next door. However, given Michigan’s lack of large groves of citrus trees, the honey that goes into this particular mead is fairly conspicuously not a local product. They do have at least one mead made with Michigan-sourced wildflower honey, and what really matters for this mead is how it tastes not the source of the ingredients. Aged on American oak for an unspecified length of time.

Nose: Leaning more towards the fruity than the floral, with cherry and citrus aromas.

Taste: Pleasant but not overpowering sweetness, gentle fruit and the barest hint of tannic oak.

Overall: Doesn’t go overboard on the sweetness, unlike some commercial meads I could name. Even so, it doesn’t have enough complexity or a good finish for sipping, so it’s more of a food wine.

Background: Matured entirely in ex-sherry casks, this Speyside whisky is the most widely available of the many, many expressions the distillery produces.

Nose: Lightly smoky, with vanilla, dried citrus peel, and raisins.

Taste: Rich dried fruit, gingery spice, a bit of sweetness, then a middling amount of smoke in the finish. Nice long finish.

Overall: Lots of sherry influence, very smooth and sippable.

Background: This hefty beer comes to us from North Coast Brewing in Fort Bragg, California and weighs in at 9% ABV. Rasputin is a historical Russian figure who today is remembered mainly for the legend surrounding his death: that he was poisoned, shot, beaten, and then thrown into an ice-covered river where he finally died.

Nose: Chocolate, and lots of it. Other than that, there’s coffee, molasses, figs, some mild leafy hop aroma and a bit of solventy alcohol.

Taste: Bitter roastiness and chocolatey sweetness, with medium hop bitterness, some earthy hop flavour, and a light fruity edge. Finish is long and not the most pleasant, with an acrid bitterness that I attribute to a heavy hand with the black patent malt.

Overall: This is a style of beer you normally want to savour, but this one doesn’t easily lend itself to that. However, if you drink more quickly and don’t let the finish shove itself forward this is a very nice beer.

Background: No age statement brandy from Korbel in California, aged in American oak barrels that previously held Jack Daniels.

Nose: Very sharp. A bit of vanilla.

Taste: Vanilla, caramel, and a bit of smoke.

Overall: Unobjectionable, but nothing to recommend itself other than price.

Background: Purported to be the first in a line of barrel aged beers from the brewery, this bottle-conditioned Arbor Brewing product is a blend of a young Belgian-style ale with a three-year-old barrel-aged sour ale.

Nose: Indistinct dark dried fruit, strawberry esters.

Taste: Malty and earthy, with overtones of orange and light spicy phenols. Very, very light lactic sourness, and a light barnyard leather funk to remind us that our friend Brettanomyces came along for the ride.

Overall: If you happen to have two of the 240 bottles of this, I’d recommend cellaring one for another year or so to let the wee bugs do their work. It’s decent now, but some age should give it more complexity.

Background: “Solera” is a term more commonly encountered in discussions of sherry production, and describes an aging and blending process which uses a series of barrels. Each year a portion of the final barrel is bottled, and that barrel is topped up with sherry from the next one down the line, and so on until the first barrel, which is topped up with the new sherry. Glenfiddich use a modified version for this expression, where the whisky is first aged normally in ex-bourbon, ex-sherry, and new oak casks then married in their “Solera vat”, which is never emptied more than half way.

Nose: Flowering heather, apple, rose petals.

Taste: Honeyed apple, charred oak, hints of sherry and spice. Medium-length finish is very drying and almost bitter.

Overall: Smoothish, but the new oak influence is heavy (almost to the point of overpowering) and the finish is slightly grating. Still, an interesting little dram.

Background: Collaborative brew between everyone’s favourite Michigan brewery, everyone’s second-favourite Norwegian brewery, and Stone. Brewed on Stone’s equipment, but the recipe was worked out via emails between the three head brewers and they all helped with the brewing. The recipe incorporates juniper berries from Italy (standing in for Norway, since they were unable to source any from there), white sage from California, and chestnuts from Michigan. In addition to the other spices, caraway seed was added as a complement to the 25% rye in the malt bill.

Nose: Green, herbal hops, followed by a touch of sage.

Taste: Lots going on. Very clear sage note, with spicy rye and juniper also quite evident. Caraway and a medium hop bitterness come through in the finish. Indistinct hop flavour; if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say an English hop variety. The 9% ABV starts to become evident after a few sips.

Overall: Very unique. Definitely not a session beer, but for an occasional taste sensation it’s quite nice. (Especially since I love sage.)

The mission: “[F]ind something reputed to be Fine Kosher Wine”

I actually studied up on kosher wines about a year ago, but didn’t write up what I learned at the time.

First things first: what makes a wine kosher? Well, kosher wine will carry a hechsher from an authority certifying that it was produced in accord with kashrus, which is the portion of halakha (Jewish religious law) dealing with dietary concerns. This mark indicates that any additives (such as fining agents) were kosher, production was supervised by the appropriate overseers (called mashgichim), and the wine is either mevushal or every step of the production was done by an observant Jew. This all has to do with the historic use of wine in idolatrous religious practises and the strict prohibition in the Torah of the use of such wine (yayin nesach), as well as a Rabbinical injunction against the use of unsupervised wine (stam yaynom).

Mevushal means “cooked” or “boiled”. Once a wine is mevushal it can be handled by non-Jews without losing its kosher status. Wine can be rendered mevushal at any stage after the press, but in the US most mevushal wine is heated prior to fermentation. Mevushal can broadly be taken as synonymous with pasteurised and follows the same procedure; thus, in modern production flash pasteurisation is seen as a way to reduce or eliminate the deleterious effects of heating the wine. While it definitely will help stability from a microbial standpoint, opinions are divided: some claim that flash heating has a positive effect on the wine’s character, while others claim that it reduces the aging potential and gives the wine a cooked fruit character.

There’s actually another level to kosher certification, which has to do with Passover. At Passover kashrut becomes even more restrictive, so a wine can be kosher for other times but not for Passover. If a wine just says “kosher”, it’s not suitable for use during Pesach; it must specifically say “kosher for Passover”.
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Background: This debut offering from Cooper Spirits made quite a splash in the spirits and cocktail world, with enterprising bartenders eager to take advantage of its unique flavour profile. Made from fresh, hand-picked elderflowers which are macerated in a proprietary process, the extract of which is then mixed into a base of grape eau de vie and sweetened with cane sugar.

Nose: Pink grapefruit, peach, and floral hints of lilac.

Taste: Sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. Mingled notes of lychee, guava, citrus, stone fruit, and pear.

Overall: Delicate yet complex, and somewhat suitable for sipping solo. Despite not being as sweet as many liqueurs, there’s still a sugary edge so it really comes into its own when mixed, even just with soda water. Plus, check out that cool bottle.

Background: Distilled in Paris based on a traditional recipe, but obviously (and heavily) artificially coloured.

Nose: Sharply spiritous, with a sugary edge and lots of anise.

Taste: Sharp, almost piny resinous edge, a bit woodsy, with an uninteresting anise flavour. Very rough aftertaste.

Overall: Could be worse, but definitely not one I’ll be buying again.