FIG MEAD – 5/5
Wow. Just wow. This accompanied our Christmas Eve cheeseboard, and it was a delight. The fig flavour is so beautifully balanced against the sweetness of the mead, delivering this rich, deep, almost caramelised series of notes. It’s difficult to compare fig to other fruits in general, but it is an absolutely genius choice to compliment Stone Circle Mead‘s handcrafted bottles.
Lashings of luxurious brown sugar with hints of agave and a generous helping of powerful but pleasant dried fruit hints, all wrapped in a cosy blanket of warming honey sweetness. There’s an edge of brandy to this one that almost makes it taste like a mince pie in a bottle – with a few mulling spices it might achieve exactly that! With a sweet, inviting scent that hints luxuriously at the flavours to come, it’s impossible not to enjoy Stone Circle Mead‘s Fig Mead as it comes, though.
This mead is a fantastic achievement for Stone Circle, and a moment of natural inspiration too – combining the rich, dark caramel taste of figs with their signature medium sweet mead has resulted in a drink not only produced to the highest of quality, but with a unique taste all of its own.
Pairing this with cured meats and mild cheeses is a must – the sweet complexity of the fig will contrast perfectly against both the saltiness of salami, prosciutto or ham. If I had an infinite supply of this, I’d be a happy man indeed.
SPICED MEAD – 3/5
This was a particularly intense bottle of mead. The spices pack a serious punch, in particular the clove – it dominates the nose and bites through every other flavour. It’s not something that persists, thankfully. The deeper you plunge into the bottle, the more your palate acclimatises to the flavour’s intensity, and you can slowly start to appreciate the rest of the spices swirling around in there. If you mixed a bit of this with the Fig Mead you’d have something that tasted pretty close to a mince pie, and I sincerely regret thinking of that once both bottles were finished.
While this is quite a pleasant drink the punchiness of the clove does essentially barricade you from appreciating the full spectrum of flavours that are just sort of drowned in the strength of that initial spice. There’s a hint of gentle sweetness provided by the honey, but nothing else really comes through. As far as festive meads go – and considering the immense skill Stone Circle Mead have displayed already – this doesn’t rank quite as highly as I’d hoped.
If you don’t mind a rather heavily spiced drink, definitely give this one a go – but if you’re looking for a delicious winter treat, I’d recommend a bottle of Fig Mead instead.
ELDERFLOWER MEAD – 4/5
I’ve typically found elderflower to be something of a challenge for meadmakers. Something about its specific floral profiles in combination with the sweetness of honey seems difficult to balance, and both such meads I’ve tried before have ranked in rather low order. Happily, Stone Circle Mead seem to have very much cracked it, balancing the medium sweetness of their Elderflower Mead on a knife edge with a rich, real thread of elderflower coursing through it.
The scent is a bright punch of elderflower, bedded in mild honey – together this gives Elderflower Mead a calming yet invigorating aroma that really piques the appetite. The taste very much follows suit, delivering a lavish, deep splash of elderflower that plunges into a taste reminiscent of springtime itself.
The elderflower accentuates the honey’s own floral depths, and that slightly dry finish allows your palate to explore each flourish of this beautifully crafted bottle of mead. I’m delighted that Stone Circle Mead have succeeded in harnessing the apparently complex nature of elderflower, and their ability to wield the flavours of the earth itself definitely shines through here.
GORSEFLOWER MEAD – 4/5
And we finish on another particularly inspired bit of meadmaking – a gorseflower infused creation that wanders closer to the concept of a medium-sweet white wine than any of Stone Circle Mead‘s products thus far. Despite this parallel it remains fiercely independent, a traditional mead making use of an ingredient that is everywhere in nature, and yet not common at all in modern mead-making.
With a gentle nose that sways softly between mild hints of honey and a beautifully distinctive gorseflower tang, this is another bottle of mead that effortlessly captures some primal, natural aspects of flavour, again walking side by side with the meads and distillations our ancestors might have imbibed. The thing I truly love about Stone Circle Mead after sampling this fantastic selection of flavours is just how fresh it all tastes. All these flavours are the real deal – no concentrates or artificial flavouring, just the fermentation process doing what it wants to do.
Stone Circle Mead Company is a meadery for the curious – for the souls who dream of what our ancestors might have sipped and held sacred in a time so far away it seems another world entirely. They are fearless with their combinations, skilfully harnessing the power of nature itself to deliver quality meads with a difference. I look forward immensely to sampling more of their offerings in the future.