Valentine’s Day in Three Beverages

Valentine’s Day is three weeks from tomorrow. I proposed to my wife of over 15 years on Valentine’s Day weekend back in 1996 so we joyously celebrate the occasion each year. This year our public celebration will be done in three drinks, each inspired from our home fermentations, beverage adventures and the romantic themes of the holiday. This week I am sharing drink number one, a mead/beer cocktail. On each of the next two Wednesdays the romantic beverage tour will continue.  Enjoy!

What would Valentine’s Day be without chocolate? I always think of fruity, sweet chocolate treats for this day and that is the theme I am going to apply in this week’s drink. Beer cocktails or beer blends aren't a new idea. The very classic one is the black and tan. Imperial Stout and cherry flavored hard cider is the version I've made most often. Generally 50/50 beer to cider. I call them Cherry Bombs!

I’ve riffed on this concept a number of times with both cider and mead.  In honor of mead, Romance by the Glass and our friends at Moonlight Meadery I will be using a mead this time.

Friends & Lovers

8 ounces of Margot's Chocolate Stout from 2012

8 ounces Moonlight Meadery Paramour

pint glass

The flavors of red & black fruits wrapped in bitter chocolate and bubbles is pretty damn sweet! This is a two-fer in a drink. A well made chocolate stout will attract beer drinkers. The explosion of fruit flavors and gentle sweetness from the mead softens the beer for some and amplifies the creation to a cocktail for others! Everybody has something to love!

Go find somebody to love and give them a squeeze!

Jason

p.s. Try Moonlight Meadery Wicked with a rich, chocolaty stout as well. Check out the cocktail and pairing ideas at the Moonlight Meadery web site for more ideas. 

Sweet Dreams

I don’t know how many times since I started making my own fermented beverages (2003) people have asked me if I was going to go commercial. I’ve toyed with the idea, I still often daydream about it, but I’ve never convinced myself that I am really that serious about it that I would make the jump to being a commercial producer. Despite being a driven individual I do have a sense that some things in this universe reveal and work themselves out in their own time, and I firmly believe this is one of those things.

Short of commercial aspirations, my motivations continue to be to learn about the art of fermentation, make tasty “house” beverages, and pay homage to my New England roots by applying fermentation to preserve the bounty of the harvest. Each year since I began I’ve experimented with different mediums, flavors and techniques to keep things exciting and to keep the learning rolling. Six years back I made my first mead, honey fermented into a wine like beverage, and while it came out good and went on to win a medal, nothing about mead really grabbed me then so I didn’t make another one until 2011.

In December of 2010 I walked through the front door of Moonlight Meadery for the very first time. I immediately met Michael Fairbother the owner and meadmaker. Michael was busy at the tasting bar for the grand opening in their new commercial space. Michael carefully explained what mead is, the different styles and his personal history with mead-making to the assembled. On the back of the tasting bar was an impressive lineup of different meads, their product line has grown quite a bit since, ranging from dry to sweet, and unflavored to those infused with fruits and spices. As I tasted each new flavor my mind was racing. How are these different styles made? Is honey a canvas waiting for an artist to release its secrets? Could I successfully make more mead?

( Vanilla beans ready for my mead. )

Madagascar, a mead flavored with vanilla, really caught my attention. Real vanilla flavor can be an intoxicating experience. It is decidedly savory and earthy, and when blended with the slight sweetness of the mead it is allowed to express an inherent warmth and a gentle bitterness.

I left Moonlight Meadery that day with neurons firing all over the place. I wasn’t immediately sure of what to make of the experience, but I did know that I needed to educate myself a little bit more on mead. Tune in next week for post with an overview of mead leading up to mead being the topic for #winechat on October 3^rd.

A few months later inspiration hit. Having recently returned from a West Coast trip that involved several beer tastings I had orange flavor on my mind. I enjoyed several Wit beers with varying degrees of orange flavor, including a sublime offering from Santa Barbara Brewing. Orange and vanilla, what a killer combination! When I was a kid I was allergic to chocolate so in the hot weather a creamsicle was, and still often is, more my style. I figured if I used orange and vanilla in a fermented beverage it would be a like an adult creamsicle, oh how delightful!

The recipe for my first mead in five years was decided (and the final product can be in the top photo). The process went smoothly, you can find the original recipe and some of the details at the WineMaker Magazine blog, and the result was beyond my personal expectations. A little orange, a little vanilla and whiffs of wildflower honey. Only slightly sweet, my new mead came off as complex and was immensely drinkable. As competition time rolled around I happily entered my creation hoping to get some useful feedback on where I could go with it. Boy was a surprised went it took first place in its category! The feedback was overwhelmingly positive from friends, both those who are knowledgeable about mead AND those who just love my fermented creations. This mead has gone on to take additional competition accolades, a very humbling result indeed.

I knew I could make it better though. And I planned to do just that in 2012. Before I set about planning my attack on the second batch I got an email that would serve to take this whole experience higher. Michael Fairborther, whom I have gotten to know both through the Brew Free or Die home-brewing club and my love of the products he creates, was interested in the recipe. But it gets better. He wanted to make a commercial version of my recipe in collaboration with me! And, wait for it, I would get to write a short paragraph to go on the side of the bottle as well as give the product a name! I was in shock.

Everyone who knows me knows that I make the beverages I do first and foremost because I want to drink them. I’m pragmatic about my craft though. I’m not the best brewer or winemaker out there, and I’ve purposely kept my process low-tech and simple which hasn’t always been the best decision. I’ve made my share of crappy products and I try my darnedest to keep on top of the various batches of stuff I have going on so nothing goes wrong, or at least terribly wrong.

So it took me a bit to wrap my head around the fact that a successful commercial producer wanted to collaborate with me. If this person thought my recipe was likely to make a commercially viable product I had to think beyond my own personal goals and see this as a vote of confidence that my inspirations and efforts were bearing grander results.

I decided to name the mead Summer Love. I choose the summer theme primarily because of my initial inspirations (creamsicles) and added love to marry with Moonlight’s own theme of Romance By The Glass. The idea that a product born from a recipe of my own would soon be available commercially was exciting to say the least.

( The mixer was a bit under-utilized for such a small batch, but it sure beats hand mixing! )

Time went by and I set about making my second batch, which is going to be better based on my pre-bottling tastings, and then the call came in. Honey was available and the desire to make a pilot batch was at hand. We finalized the details of the recipe based on the batch size, 40 gallons, and picked a date to make the new mead. As an aside, the name “Summer Love” has had unintended humorous consequences in Tweets and Facebook messages. Saying you are making summer love with somebody is a door wide open for jokes. Laugh freely, we do, it only adds to the story that this new beverage has around it!

( Chopping oranges for our creation. I didn't get a pic of me mopping the floor. I should have! )

I can’t really romanticize the process of making the mead, because I already knew how to make mead and a 40 gallon batch isn’t really a stretch in terms of equipment and process from my own enterprise. But, I had a blast doing something I love in a different way with people who are even more passionate about it than I. That's that's real life and a story worth telling!

( Me, Michael and Rick. Thanks for the fun day guys! )

I've spiced the pictures from the day throughout this post and they tell the story better than words. I very much enjoyed being able to spend the time with Michael and Rick bringing this new beverage to life. I was on site to work and I did anything and everything I could to help, including mopping the floor.

( Oranges through the port hole of the fermentation vessel. A rare artsy shot from me! )

Hopefully Summer Love will be finished and in the bottle for the holidays. The last report was that the fermentation was complete and it would soon get dosed with vanilla and be allowed to settle and age. I will definitely be letting everyone know when Summer Love is available so we can buy it all up and enjoy something new and different from Moonlight Meadery and Ancient Fire Wines!

Next Monday I will be posting an overview of mead, including a little history, notes on different styles and additional details of my mead-making projects from 2011 and 2012. If you would like to learn more about mead, and from Michael Fairbrother directly, join Moonlight Meadery, Marie Payton and the crew from #winechat on October 3^rd at 9PM on Twitter.

Cheers!

Jason

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love it or leave it, it’s Valentine’s Day. I can’t be down on the day, and that’s because I have my own history from which I can expect to have a wonderful day enjoying the love I share with Margot. I am fortunate enough for this and knowing that not everyone can say this today is troubling and not lost on me. But, press on I must.

I’ve played around with many food & beverage pairings in my blog and have at least strayed into ponderings on pairings with music, people, occasions and locations. A pairing of hearts is what’s on my mind today so that’s the pairing I planned and executed.

Margot and I met in 1995. Less than one year later, the week inclusive of Valentine’s Day, I asked Margot to marry me. On the first day of summer 1997, we were married in a beautiful garden maintained by my great-uncle Warren where he lived with his sister, and my late grandmother, Irene. Five generations of my family were assembled where we publicly declared our undying love. Sweet!

( My brother Tim, Me, Margot and Margot's sister Celeste. June 21st, 1997. )

Margot and I enjoyed the party atmosphere at Plymouth State College where we met, and our tastes precariously teetered on all sorts of edges. Along the way our drinking tastes have evolved and branched out from cheap swill beer to craft beers, small-batch wines, artisanal spirits and all drinks more interesting. Riesling was the first style of wine we both seized the same joy from, and we have enjoyed many more together since.

That’s the setup. 1995. Riesling. I found a bottle of 1995 JJ Prum Auslese Riesling from the Mosel available at Federal Wine & Spirits in Boston. A quick search of reviews convinced me the risk for the bottle was as low as it could be for its 16 or so years. The label was a bit discolored and roughed up, but otherwise the bottle didn’t offer any concerns.

Under the cap the bottle was a bit musty but the cork was solid, pliable and emerged without issue. One small piece of cork landed in the bottle. Not bad.

The color is a big, deep gold and sparkles in the light. The nose on the wine is distinctive, full of apricots, other stone fruits, honey, candied citrus with a spectrum of minerality and volatile aromas that border on chemical. On the palate the wine is tongue coating, sweet, with all of the aromatics represented. The acidity is still moderate, producing a tartness in the finish that keep things pretty well balanced. The minerality and chemical tastes are definitely represented in the reductive elements. The apricots are dried and the other fruits very ripely aged. This wine is drinking as well as I could have ever imagined. 1995 was indeed a very good year.

Cheers!

Jason

A Love Story, and How We Found Ourselves in Provence

In the late 1990’s I met a friend of Margot’s uncle Gerry named Eloy. Gerry and Eloy both live in the Montreal area and have been friends for over 40 years. Gerry is a priest and Eloy met him as young teacher at the school where Gerry also taught. Eloy escaped Cuba at the age of 18 finding refuge in Canada with help from the order of priests Gerry belongs to. The rest is indeed history, but we have to take a walk through some of that history so you can understand the greatest love story I have ever been witness to.

In the mid-1980’s Gerry and Eloy took a trip to the Holy Land. On that trip Eloy met a woman named Francoise. They came to be fond of each other, but chose a friendship and long distance correspondence instead of something more. Francoise lived in Paris, France and Eloy in Broussard, Quebec. They met several more times on various trips and maintained a long distance friendship all the while. During that same time Eloy became an adopted member of Margot’s family and formed a strong bond with Helene, Margot’s mother. Eloy has always been treated as a family member and is often spoken of as another uncle by Margot and her siblings. I’ve come to know him as a friend in 20+ years, and more recently as a stalwart caregiver to Gerry as he continues to battle aggressive cancer. It is Eloy that drives Gerry back and forth to family holidays in the States, often staying at our home for the celebrations. Not long after Margot’s father passed away Gerry took Helene on her dream of a lifetime trip to France, and ultimately to stay with Francoise who had since moved to Provence. She raved about the place and often told Margot she should plan to get there one day.

In 2010 Eloy and Francoise met up once again, but something was different this time. Both found themselves securely retired, having large extended families, no children and a vibrant zest for life. When I got an e-mail from Gerry stating quite plainly that Eloy and Francoise (who I did not know or know of at the time) were going to be married in 2011, I certainly was surprised. With the back story in hand I reflected on it as one of the greatest stories and definitely the greatest love story I had ever heard. I couldn’t have been happier for a man who I have watched do so much for others with the kind of selflessness and grace I am immensely envious of. But I would be happier in the details of this story as it unfolded.

About a month after the announcement was made we received an e-mail from Eloy that opened the invitation to attend the wedding to all of his family members, including us. Margot called to relate the news and in a surprise move my response was, “so we are going to go, right? At first all she said was “What!” She was shocked at the ease with I was making such a grand commitment. I am not generally that way. But I had my motivations. Eloy has been a great friend to Margot’s family and was at the center of a story that is likely to become a legend for them. The wedding was also in France, a place neither of us had yet travelled to and very much wanted to. And despite some of the stereotypes about weddings, they generally are an example of the best things this life has to offer. I knew I had to be in on this!

We responded to Eloy that we would indeed be attending and to keep us apprised of the details as they evolved. We soon found that we would be the only family representatives at the wedding. Unfortunately Gerry’s health would not permit the trip and others were not able for various and well understood reasons. Functioning as the family ambassadors made the trip a great honor for us. Joining two families is a big deal, and we would be projecting an image of new family to two others (remember the non-familial relation) at the same time being recipients of the same from both. I was actually nervous.

As the plans evolved the holidays rolled around and once again Gerry and Eloy came to visit for Christmas. But this visit was much more exciting. Francoise would be joining us and would be meeting Margot’s family for the first time! Our visit with them was fantastic. Margot and I got to play hosts in advance of them doing the same for us. We discussed the arrangements for the trip and were overjoyed when a place to stay at Francoise’s home was offered. We set about scheduling flights between Boston and Paris and the train between Paris and Avignon. About two weeks before the trip we confirmed our arrival details and waited with intense anticipation.

As you read in the first post, our trip was smooth but tiring. We arrived on Thursday, with a day and a half to go before the big day. We joined many other family and friends who were staying and/or bustling around making ready for the wedding. We offered to help in any way we could and ultimately helped clean the home for the after wedding social and helped setup the reception hall for the wedding celebration.

Before we left my mother had shipped us a gift to take Eloy and Francoise. My mother has also found enjoyment spending time with Eloy during many combined family holidays we have had. She knits and made a beautiful white shawl as part of a project with the ladies of her church. The prayer shawls are an example of the love of their church community and have been made for all manner of occasions where the love and support of a friends can feed the human spirit. We presented Francoise and Eloy with the shawl right before the wedding and found timing to be everything. Despite it being a warm, sunny Provencal winter day, Francoise had been concerned that she might get a chill outside but hadn’t determined a remedy. Her words were, “this is just what I needed”, and promptly donned it over her dress and went on about her final preparations. I called my mother a few minutes before the wedding began and I could tell that she was touched by this outcome. Her gift became part of the celebration. What an unexpected twist!

The hour came and we jumped in the car with friends of Francoise’s who shuttled us to the city center of Le Thor where both the civil confirmation and wedding mass would be held.

Up to this point I haven’t mentioned a key detail that provided both a source of frustration (for Margot and I) and a lot of laughs for everyone during our stay. We don’t speak French or Spanish, and both of which were being uttered in considerable quantities during our stay! In an upcoming post about the friends we made during our stay I’ll elaborate on this story a bit more and give a shout out to a few folks who were essential in helping us both learn, but also to communicate efficiently with the dozens of people we ultimately interacted with.

So we drove along with people we had met 3 minutes previously, all mutually unable to efficiently communicate with other. Awesome! It worked out great though. They were even looking for us after the mass to ensure we wouldn’t be left behind.

( The laughing hadn't quite kicked in. )

The civil confirmation of the wedding by the Mayor of Le Thor was both serious and light. There were documents to be signed in between friendly jokes and the compulsory verbal declaration of intentions to be married and uphold that choice for as long as they should be living. Laughter permeated the entire assembly when the customary consideration of providing a loving and safe home for children was reached. Neither the bride nor groom had made that choice when it was most likely, and they with their assembled friends and family couldn’t help but make light of that ship having sailed off long ago. Something tells me this is real living, and only further confirms that the people in this story have remarkable joie de vivre.

The wedding mass was held in a 13th century cathedral with an assemblage of 7 priests comprised of both parish clergy and friends from France and abroad. It was a beautiful ceremony with joyful singing and recitation of readings and wedding prayers in multiple languages. Later we received an e-mail from Gerry indicating he celebrated mass at his parish back in Montreal at 9:30 AM so he could be joined in mass with his family 6 hours ahead in France.

( That is a quite group to officiate a wedding! )

( How could we have missed this? )

( The kids peppered the happy couple with rice with joyful adandon! )

A contingent of nearly 200 people returned to Francoise’s home for a celebratory social with champagne, wine, food and lots of laughter. Two of Gerry’s friends got together with us for a picture to send along so Gerry could enjoy the event through us.

( Marc, Yvon, Margot, Me )

The wedding reception was held at a hall a few towns over and was quite similar to many we have been to before. Francoise and Eloy thanked their family and friends for making the trip including special thanks to those who had travelled quite a distance to enjoy their special day. We felt so special.

( To Eloy & Francoise! )

The food was excellent, the people were fun and when we got to the skits and singing we were once again able to see how the family was celebrating this wonderful event. There was dancing to a wide array of French and American music (50/60’s classics are big there) and lots of toasting. When Tom Jones Sex Bomb came on Margot and I had to laugh. The mix of folks grooving on the dance floor to this particular song is a vision that will make us laugh for years to come!
 

( You can just feel the happiness and joy. )

 

( Fireworks are a great touch at a wedding reception. )

 
This story is early in its telling and I for one can’t wait to see more of it unfold.

Cheers!

Jason

Guest Post at Sticks Forks Fingers - Celebrating A Life Together

For our last guest post while Pam is away on her honeymoon we shared the story of our ten year anniversary party. We had a small wedding/reception and the party allowed us to kick it up a bit when we had the resources to do so. Please take a swing by and leave a comment for Pam. She will be home soon and our warm hugs of congratulations will be a nice welcome home.

http://sticksforksfingers.blogspot.com/2010/10/celebrating-life-together.html

We will be attending the Second Glass Wine Riot in Boston today. Check back tomorrow for a report on all the wines we tasted and the energy of the event.

Cheers!

--Jason