Bottle @ the DCMDVA Gathering. Very viscous dark amber-beige colored mead with a good amount of auburn highlights. Aroma of yellow, sugary, ripe fruits, brandy, sherry, alcohol, peach esters, more alcohol, strong honey. Flavor is immensely powerful; sweet and alcoholic, it tastes like a mix of cognac and peach brandy, with perhaps a touch of peach schnapps. Lovely fruit flavors and an incredibly thick, viscous body; sticky and decadent. To style, it certainly stands out as the best strong honey dessert mead. Finish is like taking an English barleywine and putting it through the eisbock process 3 or 4 times. It’s pure raisins and sugar. I must say, it still is impossibly sweet and alcoholic. It’s grand, but I’ll take a lighter mead any day.

Rerate, at Sunset Grille, 9/10/2005. Very educating to have this in the company of some other meads. What I find is that, yes, this is a thick, sweet powerful mead, but it gets very one-dimensional. Light brandy flavors, vanilla, almonds, and thick honey. A bit boring by the end, which thins out considerably. Abv is masked nicely, I will say. There were 2 or 3 other meads I’d prefer over this, though, even in the small sampling I did. Thick, fiery orange-amber-golden color is very viscous.