Estrogen Lass and I took a bit of a trip to the liquor store the other day. Since this was actually something of a wine warehouse, (very large and about 75% filled with wine), I though it might have a fair chance of stocking some mead (which I adore). After a fruitless search on my own Estrogen Lass asked one of the stockboys who gave us a blank stare and then told us point blank that they had none despite the obvious fact that he had no *idea* what mead was!
I immediately appealed to the cluster of managers up front who were in a huff because "someone" (one of the managers themselves I was able to glean), had misplaced two entire cases of wine valued at around $60 a bottle! I could tell the first guy didn't want to deal with a lowly "customer" at the time but one of them (I can only presume he was either free and clear of the wine scandal or he was in fact a theif and had smply managed to pin it on another manager) assured me that they did in fact carry one brand of mead.
Joy! I follwed him back into the port and dessert wine section where he pointed to a white bottle on the bottom shelf. "There you are, thats the only brand we stock but it is good!", he declaimed. I thanked the man and exmained the bottle. I won't even pretend that I remember the name of the brand because I was too busy being shocked by the content of the label to memorize it.
"This is a fine white wine product with honey and herbs added. 24 Proof." BAH! THIS IS HERESY! For those of you out there who have never experienced the sublime goodness of mead allow me to assure you that it had nothing whatever to do with *white fucking wine*. Mead is water and fermented honey with a few choice herbs thrown in or none at all depending on the type you like to make. It's delicate flavors are further effected by the type and region of the honey used for fermentation and also by the conditons in which it is fermented. In this way it is rather akin to a cross between a beer and a wine. There is nothing quite like it. That being said, this *craptacular* msycengenated bottle was not mead. This is very much like filling a wine bottle one-quarter full of cheap vodka and then topping it off with grape juice to call it a Merlot!
My disappointment knows no bounds as I can find this lovely drink in "backwards" Texas but not out here in the "more refined" culture of Maryland. I think I will put a bit of lighter fluid in a jug, fill the rest with piss adn sell as gasoline for $1.78 a gallon. These clods would probably thank me for it.