Crave Meadery

With only a few hours before work we decided to check out a local Meadery in Blackstone.  Located in a small building right on the town boarder with Woonsocket is Ken Tubman's Crave Mead. The building is nothing fancy and is clearly a working meadery that offered tastings to educate and encourage the community to try something differently instead of just a retail operation. As their slogan says "Rethink your drink!"  

Our tour began with a quick explanation of how Ken got into the mead making business.  As an avid bee enthusiast and keeper who enjoyed making wines and beer he thought what better thing to do then combine his too biggest interests and put his tasty honey to good use.

Our first sample was the paddy mead. The dry mead is made from roughly 1/2 lb honey, water, and yeast.  He uses 4 different yeasts as each yeast creates a different taste depending on what he is trying to create. It had a nice and sweet but refined flavor that I really enjoyed. The dry mead is also the base for all his other flavored meads and ferments for roughly 2 months before it's ready to be bottled and sold. 

As his business grew he stopped using his own wildflower honey and began sourcing it locally from a bee keeper in Bellerica, Ma. The honey is a dark wildflower honey and really adds a great flavor to his mead.   If he is making a flavored mead he then adds either juice or fruit and allows it to ferment for another month or two before bottling. 

We tried 4 flavored meads next.  The first flavored mead was a pear nectar which was dry and slightly bitter but lighter then the dry mead.  Neither Grace or myself cared for this one. It was good but the original dry mead had a more balanced natural taste. 

The second flavored mead we tried was a pomegranate sour cherry mead. The sweetness of the pomegranate was a nice compliment to the very sour cherry taste. This would be a great wine to mix with fruit to make a sangria. 

The third mead we sampled was the blueberry mead. This was a very balanced flavorful blend which received many nods of approval from those in the sampling group. It was a natural taste with a sweetness that complimented the flavors.

The last flavored mead we tried was a strawberry mead which was made with 1lb of strawberries per gallon of dry mead. This was my favorite by far. It was light and refreshing with a nice strawberry flavor that wasn't overpowering. As a lover of anything strawberry it was no surprise that I would pick this as my favorite. 

As a special treat he offers us a chance to taste his just approved blend of mead and wine called Pyment which is a mix of Cabernet and mead; 2/3's Cabernet and 1/3 honey wine. This tasted more like the Cabernet then a mead and had that bitter taste I don't like about many red wines. While I can see how some might like this I felt it strayed too far from what a mead is about. 

Before leaving we each picked up a bottle. I went for the Strawberry Mead and Grace picked up a bottle of the Blueberry Mead. The bottles are $16 a piece and because we used a groupon for our tour we were able to take home a small 8 oz bottle of the honey they use to make their mead. 

It was a cool experience and we got to sample a great product that I doubt I would have otherwise discovered. Having tried mead before I knew I would like it and Crave Meads unique blends were definitely a treat. 

Task 5 - Moonlight Meadery

(05) Visit a winery or brewery & take the tour

Activity: Moonlight Meadery
Location: 23 Londonderry Road Unit #17, Londonderry, NH 03053
Cost: $25.00 per 2 people (Groupon)
When: June 1, 2013
Rating: 5-Stars

Having learned how beer is brewed, wine is age, and alcohol fermented I thought I would learn how honey wine or mead is made. At Moonlight Meadery in Londonderry, NH, I learned from the son of the founder Michael Fairbrother that when you combine 1 part honey and 3 parts water with yeast mead is produced.

After a quick history lesson about the origin od mead he began the tour in their newly expanded Moonlight Meadery production facility. Here the tour guide explained the process of fermentation, filtering, aging, bottling, packaging and finally distribution of their various mead products. I found the tour both informative and enjoyable.

By the end of our tour at the meadery, we went through the nearly 64 different meads they produce and like father like son, our tour guide has a deep passion about their mead products. His experience and personal preferences guided our tasting session from the dry to the sweet offerings. 

During the tasting, I learned that you can affect the flavor by combining the mead with other ingredients and/or by aging it in oak barrel vs a regular fermentation tank. Mead that contains spices are referred to as metheglin, mead that contains fruit is called melomel, and meads that are fermented with grapes are called a pyment.

Moonlight Meadery calls their product Romance by the glass… and they name each of their different meads accordingly. First, I sampled Sensual, a traditional mead made from just wildflower honey. It was an excellent way to start as I learned how traditional mead should taste. Next I tasted some of their specialty meads. The meads I tried were: Red Dress, Kurt’s Apple Pie, Serenity, Sumptuous, Temerity, Admiration and finally their most premium mead Utopian. Utopian Mead is aged in Oak Barrels that had been used by Samuel Adams’s to age Utopias. These barrels impart a flavorful yet subtle fruity sweetness like a fine cognac or aged sherry without the bite.

I couldn’t leave without making a purchase and selected Kurt’s Apple Pie as my mead of choice. Made from local apple cider and Madagascar vanilla with a touch of Vietnamese cinnamon it tasted just like the apple pie my grandmother used to make in a liquid form. I can’t wait to try his suggestion to drizzle this over some fresh made vanilla ice cream. 

Task 05 - Madonna Estate

(05) Visit a winery or brewery & take the tour

Winery/Vineyard: Madonna Estate
Location: 5400 Old Sonoma Road
Napa, CA 94559
(707) 255-8864

Website: www.madonnaestate.com  

Rating: 4-Stars
 
Since 1922 the Bartolucci Family has consistently crafted their skills and grown grapes and produced wine at Madonna Estate. Located in the renowned Carneros region where the land is fertile and the climate cool, tThe Bartolucci family has found success with their organically grown grapes and Estate Bottled wines.

As the third oldest winemaking family in the Napa Valley, the Bartolucci’s are dedicated to continue the premium grape growing and fine winemaking that has been established by generations passed. It is their commitment to continue to farm naturally, to preserve, and refine the winemaking traditions of their past, which will result in bringing you the finest wines possible. 

 

In 1912, Andrea “Andy” Bartolucci left Italy and traveled to the United States. After a long journey he arrived at Ellis Island and made his way to San Francisco where he worked on the French Exhibition Building at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. After his job was done in 1922 he ventured north to the rich and fertile soil of the Napa Valley and purchased a 24-acre vineyard and winery across from Mount St. John peak in the town of Oakville, and named it Madonna Winery. Soon after a fire devastated the winery in 1924. With the support of his family they rebuilt it and in 1933 his son Louis joined him.

 

From 1955 - 1965 Louis with his brothers purchased additional acreage to expand the family business and established some of the first varietal vineyards in the Napa Valley. In 1967 Louis’ son, “Buck” joined his father at the winery as assistant winemaker. In 1970 the family vineyards and Madonna Winery were sold. Passionate about continuing their family tradition, Buck purchased 160 acres of land in the Carneros Region of Napa Valley that same year and named it Madonna Vineyard. It is here that he primarily planted Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes but knew there was potential to grow many different varieties.

 

In 1977, Louis eager to make wine again purchased a 4½-acre piece of land near Madonna Vineyard. Together Buck and Louis constructed the current Madonna Estate Winery. The production of Estate Bottled Wines, Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Dolcetto, Barbera, Riesling, Gewurztraminer, and Muscat Canelli, began.Currently, Buck and his wife Susan live on the family vineyard and tend to every aspect of the vineyard and winery. In 1997, his daughter Brette joined the family and she continues her vineyard and winery education under the tutelage of her father.

 

Our tour began with the vines where we got up close to them and their growth and life cycle were explained. I learned that it takes years of growing grape vines before your vines are mature enough to grow grapes suitable for wine production. We then moved indoors to their warehouse where wine barrels were stacked to the ceiling. It is here that our guide explained what differentiates Madonna Estate from others. They produce smaller batches of richer more flavorful wines by dry farming. We learned that dry farming stresses the vines which produce richer flavors and greater depth in the wine. We then moved on from the warehouse to their tasting room where we sampled many of the wine varietals they produce. Of the three vineyards we visited this was the only one that let us get close to the vines and it was also here I learned more about wine production then any of the others. The facility is not nearly as impressive and significantly smaller but you can tell that their passion is in producing wines and that they pride themselves on those ideals rather than being a large commercialized vineyard. 

 

I also really liked their wine openers and bought a few from gifts to bring home.

 

 

Task 05 - Cline Cellars

(05) Visit a winery or brewery & take the tour

Winery/Vineyard: Cline Cellars
Location:              24737 Arnold Drive
                              Sonoma, CA 95476
                              (800) 546-2070

Website:               www.clinecellars.com

Rating:                 3.5-Stars

Owned by Fred and Nancy Cline along with Jacuzzi Vineyard across the street Cline Cellars is the meat behind their wine producing efforts. It is on this magnificently landscaped 350 acres of vineyards and lush lawns surrounded by 5, 000 rose bushes that the grapes are processed and the wine is born not just for Cline Cellars but for Jacuzzi as well. 

Cline Cellars while today a successful vineyard is also a historic piece of property that was once the site of a Miwok Village, the first camp of the Sonoma Mission, a natural hot spring bath house of the early 1900s, and a horse ranch. Fred Cline used his inheritance from the Sale of Jacuzzi Bros in 1982 to start a winery in Oakley, California. In 1991 they moved those operations to the 350 acre estate in the Carneros District they call home today. They specialize in Zinfanedl and Rhone varietals including Syrah, Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne. Their holdings include some of the oldest and rarest vines in California.

While this vineyard is not as picturesque as its newest sibling across the street it offers a better picture of wine production. Our tour started in the driveway where we were met by our guide who took us out back and past all the machines and fermentation tanks they use to produce the wine. At each piece of machinery she explained its purpose and how it works. I wish the machines had been running while we were there. It would have been exciting to actually see the grapes being crushed. After the explanation of the process we found ourselves in a warehouse lines with barrels of various sizes. It was here that you could see that they also process the grapes and barrel the wines for Jacuzzi by the labels on each barrel.

Once the tour was done we moved on to the tasting. Under the big tent in the front we were treated with many options to taste representing the many different kinds of wine they produce. While the tour offered a select set of wines to taste they were more than happy to allow us to sample any of the wines they offered. I discovered that I prefer a sweeter white wine then I do red wines. Once we finished sampling the wines we moved on to the gift shop. While I enjoyed the wines my less then refined taste buds couldn’t appreciate the wines as much as they I am sure should have been. As a result I opted not to make a wine purchase since it was costly to ship it home and instead picked up a few novelty items. We then had the opportunity to briefly explore the grounds. They have a great museum showcasing their Sonoma Mission history and it houses the California Mission Models from the 1939 World’s Fair.

While this is the location where the wine is processed and barreled I rate it slightly lower than its sibling Jacuzzi because I felt rushed through the tour and somewhat more pressured to make a purchase. Additionally the wine tasting tent was far less refined in comparison to Jacuzzi. While I understand that it meant to be more rustic a tent next to the parking lot lacked for me the attention to detail I expected.

 



Task 05 - Jacuzzi Family Vineyards

(05) Visit a winery or brewery & take the tour

Winery/Vineyard: Jacuzzi Family Vineyards
Location:               24724 Arnold Drive
                               Sonoma, CA 95476
                               (866) 522-8693

Website:                www.jacuzziwines.com

Rating:                  4-Stars

The name Jacuzzi is best known and associated with spas and hot tubs, but in the Sanoma/Carneros region of Sonoma, California, it is also known for great wines. The Jacuzzi Vineyard and the Cline Vineyard across the street are owned by Nancy and Fred Cline. Fred is the grandson of Valeriano Jacuzzi. He began making wine at the tender age of 13 and his grandfather taught him everything.  In 1982 Cline received his $9,000 inheritance from his grandfather and promptly started Cline Cellars. Their operations started with 161 acres but today they own a total of 940, mostly in the Petaluma Gap of the Sonoma-Carneros Region. By 2001, they were practicing sustainable farming using the “green string” method, and A few years later opened Jacuzzi Family Vineyards. The vineyard located on CA-121 is lead by winemaker Charlie Tsegeletos whose family has a history of growing grapes and making wine in Sonoma since the 1930’s.

Our tour started in the driveway where we were greeted by our tour guide. After a quick introduction we were lead to a courtyard with a view of the vineyard beyond a marble fountain on a glorious sunny day. We got our first wine sample and a lesson on how to really appreciate both the scent and flavor of wines. We were taught the proper way to aerate the wine and how to smell then taste the wine.  After that first sample we moved on to the first of the two tasting rooms offered at the estate.

The first tasting room is adorned with European style and the Italian heritage is obvious. Marble sculptures surround the entry way and the walls are lined with barrels of wine. Located in the center was a table with several wines we would taste. Our guide began explained each wine composition and its processing. He spoke in simple terms with enough detail to educate the serious student while maintaining interest from the casual taster.  All their wines are available for sale and can only be bought directly from the vineyard. While I really enjoyed each of the wines I sampled I wouldn’t describe myself as someone who can really appreciate a fine wine. As a result I couldn’t bring myself to make a purchase and ship it cross country because generally I am satisfied with the 2-buck chuck I pick up from home at Trader Joes. While I made no wine purchases even my poorly tuned taste buds could appreciate the quality wines they produce.

The second tasting room is home to The Olive Press which was created in 1995 by Ed Stolman and Deborah Rogers.  Known as the Olive Queen Deborah has been making the finest Extra Virgin Olive Oils in California for the past 17 years. They produce a line of Olive oil for the Jacuzzi family which has won several local awards. I sampled many of their flavored olive oils as well as their balsamic vinegars. With limited space I simply couldn’t take home a large bottle and settled on a small bottle of Fig Balsamic. I am looking forward to pairing it with some quality ingredients and making a special meal when I return home. Maybe I’ll splurge and order a bottle of their wine when I get home.