Two for one today. M. picked the Fermoy Estate merlot on our recent trek to the wine shop because she wanted to try one from Margaret River in Western Australia. We took it to a modern Australian/Italian restaurant up the road, a bit more fancy than ones we normally go to – because we had a 20% discount coupon ;-). I figured the hand-made pasta and the chicken-stuffed-with-spiced-sausage dishes we ordered would suit the wine reasonably well.

I am still really struggling with the big international red wine grape varieties. I mean, I can sort of tell the difference between merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and shiraz, but when it comes to actually describing them I’m still at a loss. Honestly, I could glean nothing out of this except the standard “blackcurranty” and “plummy” buzzwords. It was fairly tannic, but that’s really my only contribution to an original description. And I didn’t find it particularly nice, either. I need more practice with the reds.

The Adina dessert semillon on the other hand, we sipped at home as a stand-alone after-dinner sweet several days later. We’d acquired this on our trip to the Hunter Valley last year, and to my mind as we tasted things on a tour of vineyards, this was the best sweet wine of the trip. I recalled a piercing, sweet lemony acidity, which was how it first hits the nose and palate on more careful tasting. The aroma is of fresh lemons and lime, with a hint of banana. There’s fermentation prickle, which makes the lemon sweetness refreshing and it develops into a mild marmalade bitterness at the finish. It’s very light and enjoyable. We might pop into Adina Vineyard next time to grab some more.

Mead is fermented wine-like drink made of honey. I’ve had it once before, at a friend’s birthday party some years ago, and all I remember is how deliciously sweet it was. I’d never seen it for sale anywhere, until the weekend recently when I went up to the Blue Mountains and happened on a wine shop in Katoomba. Of course I had to buy some.

Checking the company’s website when I got home, I discovered that they make three types of mead: honey mead, spiced mead, and liqueur mead. The only one I saw in the shop was the spiced mead, so that’s what we’re trying first. I plan to give the company’s distributor a call and see where I can find a place locally that sells the other two varieties.

Anyway, the spiced mead comes with a recommendation on the bottle that it be served hot, at around 70°C. Just the perfect thing for relaxing on a cold winter’s evening, snuggled under a blanket in front of the TV. So for my first taste, I heated up a mug of the golden liquid in the microwave, taking care not to boil it. Sounds like some sort of sacrilege for wine, but then this is no ordinary wine.

When hot, the aroma drifts about and fills the room with Christmassy smells of spiced puddings. Unfortunately it makes it hard to get a close sniff of the aroma, since it immediately makes you choke with the alcohol fumes. The taste is warm and sweet, with a bit of a tang, like a hot honey and lemon toddy with a good hit of brandy. That was about as much as I got from the hot version.

Later I tried a glass at room temperature. This was much nicer. The colour is rich and deep, a golden amber that just looks gorgeous in the glass. It is thick and sticks to the inside of the glass when swirled. It’s beautiful just to look at this stuff. The aroma is strong and heady, reminiscent of fruitcake, rich with brandy and spices – the cinnamon and cloves added to make it spiced come through firmly, but not overpoweringly. The taste is like raisins, sweet and delicious, before the spice begins to dominate. There’s a tang, a little like orange marmalade, spiced with those cloves, and it lingers on the back of the tongue.

It’s nice, but I really want to try the non-spiced version, and especially the liqueur version. I suspect I’ll like those even more.