Afon Mêl Apricot Mead
The New Quay Honey Farm is quite prolific in producing multiple flavours of their “Welsh honey mead” on top of their “pure” honey mead. Today’s mead is their apricot flavour.
Apricot is a flavour that naturally emerges in some of the more complex wine grapes such as Chardonnay and Viognier, so it’s not too much of a stretch to see an apricot mead pair with savoury foods.
Moroccan cuisine commonly uses apricots and sweeter wines generally pair well with spicy, Middle Eastern foods. It’s possible to match apricot melomel well with Indian food as well, but other fruits such as mango might be a stronger match (in place of mango lassi which is common in Indian restaurants in the UK).
A mead flavoured with fruit is technically known as a melomel.
Appearance
This mead (melomel) is a little deeper in colour than the “pure” honey mead. It has more orange hues presumably taken from the apricot fruit itself.
Nose
There is a bold bouquet as with the pure mead. The apricot flavours are pronounced.
Taste
The first taste is a strong, sweet one that carries the apricot well. The acidity seems lower than the pure mead, but that be an effect of the apricot flavour given the fruit is almost certainly more acidic than the honey, if anything.