Heidrun Meadery

Last week we had the super treat of visiting Gordon Hull, the man who is Heidrun Meadery, in Arcata, CA.

Mead (wine made from honey) is an ancient alcoholic beverage, but currently most folks’ only experience with mead — if they get to taste it at all — is with rustic concoctions which are often sweetened or not fully fermented, which carries the sweetness of honey through to the drinker.

Gordon’s meads are totally different.

Much as (grape) wine exposes the difference in varietals by fermenting out the grape’s sugar — it’s most dominant flavor at harvest — Gordon’s meads ferment away almost all the sugar in the honey, leaving only the overtones of flavor which make each honey unique. Without sugar getting in the way, the essence of each honey is exposed to the drinker. Furthermore, these meads are naturally carbonated and disgorged in the Champagne method, and the effect of the tiny bubbles on the palate serves to enhance the distinctiveness of each honey varietal.

At the meadery — named after Thor’s goat who produced mead in place of milk — we tasted several different varietes of honey. They ranged from fruity and floral (orange blossom), to grassy (alfalfa blossom), to mild and earthy (sage blossom), a creamy and slightly sweet (starthistle blossom).

We also tasted a bottle-conditioned (but not Champagne method, so it still has sediment in it) mead made of Humboldt County Wildflowers (one assumes that in context, “wildflowers” is partially euphemistic). This mead is comparable in many ways to a rich golden ale, perhaps a Belgian.

We’ve brought on the starthistle sparkling mead by the glass and bottle, and the Humboldt County Wildflowers mead by the bottle. I really recommend the starthistle for folks who like the bubbly, and the Wildflower for folks who like craft beer. In both cases, the mead is familiar but intriguingly different, and delicious.

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