3.9 AROMA 8/10 APPEARANCE 4/5 TASTE 8/10 PALATE 3/5 OVERALL 16/20
Pours a nice orange red hue. Aroma of rich sweet buckwheat honey, maple, and subtle cherry. Wonderful buckwheat honey wow does buckwheat rule. Very sweet without being cloying. Hints of cherry with some earthy wax. Real nice.
3.5 AROMA 7/10 APPEARANCE 4/5 TASTE 6/10 PALATE 4/5 OVERALL 14/20
Bottle thanks to secret santa. Pours with a clear, deep golden near bronze or orange body. Laser etched legs. Aromas of buttery honey, fall leaves, hay, straw, cherry pits, strong/funky/aggressive honey, and a light earthy note. Flavors are sweet, cherry, aggressive honey, coconut, cellulose/vegital, and kirshwasser (cherry brandy). A bit rough for a premium/limited product from my favorite meadery. Syrupy mouthfeel with maybe a tinge of carbonation. Body is thick but the sweetness isn’t really THAT high at all. Kind of leaves and abrupt alcoholic finish. Seems like their might even be a tinge of effervescence which would be a fault in this still mead. A good overall mead, but rough from what I have had from B Nektar.
Edit: compared to the other raters, it feels like I have a different product. Mine is a notably darker hue than mentioned (bronze vs. gold) and mine had minimal (very light) cherry flavor.
3.5 AROMA 7/10 APPEARANCE 4/5 TASTE 6/10 PALATE 3/5 OVERALL 15/20
Purchased a single 375 ml bottle via winebuys.com. Pours a still light white zinfandel colored mead with a clean disk top and average viscosity tears inside glass. Aroma of bing cherries with some buckwheat honey and light maple syrup. Taste is quite complex. Full bodied with flavors of dark honey, a hint of maple and some Vicks Cherry Nyquil. Finish has some alcohol bite, with a sweet Buckwheat honey and cherry aftertaste that lingers a little. I would recommend aging this one a few years to smooth out the palate.
3.3 AROMA 6/10 APPEARANCE 3/5 TASTE 6/10 PALATE 4/5 OVERALL 14/20
UPDATED: AUG 6, 2009 Bottle thanks to my little ugly duckling. Shared half of it a couple days ago at the end of a tasting. While pretty decent after all we had, I thought it deserved a more thorough investigation.
Poured into an Ommegang tulip, which is probably the wrong move with this. A color in between wine vinegar & white zinfandel. Skirt of white soapy suds, even after a day & change. We poured this amateurishly into shot glasses the other night.
Smell is intense with cherry skins & wheat & earth(never really experienced buckwheat, outside of Eddie Murphy & SNL, sorry). Almost savory. Very perfumey, like grandma. :P Rose water. Plastic & medicinal qualities still manage to plague it, but still retain most of its natural air. Alcohol is tolerable, but ready to strike.
Taste is almost spicy at first with earthy pits, pesticides & Robitussin. Now with a wider-mouthed glass & time to think about it, I sense more rose water, cranberry tartness, & some pure cherry juice that I tried for the first time thanks to the host’s lovely wife & her appetite for things different.
Just a faint touch of carbonation then, body now still manages to remain fairly light considering. Thinly coating, alcohol is there but always seems to be receding. Finish is a touch bitter & surprisingly dry. Better to me completely room temp. as opposed to chilled or warm. Cherry seemed a bit too hairy & medicinal, but overall the mead is pretty good. :)
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