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and others end up undergoing a painstaking bottling process conceived in the Champagne region of France. Mead is actually much more versatile than people – myself included – tend to imagine, something that Ernst finds to be a major barrier. “The biggest challenge is simply getting people to try it,” he says as hemeets me at themeadery’s front door. “People have the idea that mead is sweet and syrupy and they don’t want to taste it. If I can just get people tasting, the rest will fall into place.” For the first time since I downloaded the app seven or eight years ago, I find myself scrolling through the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guidelines until I reach the section on mead. I am ready to start sampling. Cape Town Mead Company’s tasting room is based in an inauspicious industrial park in Maitland. Downstairs, dozens of 750ml champagne-style bottles sit on riddling racks, just as you might see in the wine cellars of Champagne. This is Melaurea, Ernst’s MCC style mead and the one with which he kicks off the tasting. Just as South African bubbly producers cannot call their wines champagne, so mead makers following the champagne method here are not allowed to use the local term, MCC (Methode Cap Classique), so Ernst has come up with a new moniker: Mead Methode Traditionnelle, or MMT for short. His version is 12% ABV and filled with flavours of sultanas and honey, with a pronounced bready, yeasty character that prompts peopleatmy table tocompare it toawell-agedFrenchchampagne. The batch we are tasting is now six years old, of which almost a year was spent in secondary fermentation. This is an important part of the “traditional method” mentioned in MMT’s title. In a process not dissimilar to the bottle conditioning of certain beers, the mead is carbonated naturally in the bottle. A small amount of honey and yeast is added to each bottle which is then capped, creating soft, moussey bubbles over the course of many months. While this is taking place, Ernst gradually performs the riddling process, turning and inverting the bottles a fraction at a time to get the sediment to slowly fall towards the cap. After about 10 months, the bottles are taken to a Stellenbosch winery for disgorgement – that is, when the yeast that has settled in the neck of each bottle is frozen and cap is popped off, taking the blob of frozen yeast with it. A champagne cork takes up residence in the bottle neck and theMMT continues to age until Ernst deems it fit to release onto the market. A NEW LEXICON Sadly, the MMT – my favourite of everything we taste that day – doesn’t sell well in South Africa and almost all of it is destined to be exported to Germany, where it has a firm following. That said, it does have a few aficionados among South African beer lovers. “It has been really well received among craft beer drinkers here,” Ernst says. “It even won best of show at the 2019 Fools & Fans Festival, beating all the beers that were there!” The main reason Ernst attended that festival was to showcase his braggot – a blend of mead and beer. In this case, it is 50% mead and 50% pale ale, resulting in an 8.4% ABV braggot that was keg-aged for 18 months before being canned. And the braggot isn’t the only hybrid Ernst makes. Next on the tasting menu is a pyment – a beverage that has me reaching for my BJCP app. It informs me that “a pyment is a melomel made with grapes”. Not to be confused, of course, with a cyser, which is made with apples. It seems I have a lot to learn about the world of mead. Luckily Ernst is on hand to help. His pyment is essentially a mead/wine hybrid – a blend of dry mead and Chardonnay. It has a note of fresh buchu to it, with an appealing fruitiness reminiscent of slightly under-ripe peaches which makes for a unique and complex beverage. We don’t taste a cyser, but we do move through a range of beverages that demonstrate mead is far more varied that I had imagined. We taste chilli mead and a mead liqueur, this one made with fynbos honey. “I don’t use a strong flavoured honey like fynbos for the MMT,” says Ernst, “but in the liqueur that herbaceous character works well, giving it extra depth of flavour.” We also sample a second MMT – sweeter than the first and with a more obvious honey character. And finally Ernst whips out an electric burner and heats up a pre-spiced pot of mulled mead. It makes me want to put up my Christmas tree and while it’s perhaps not the perfect tipple for our festive season, I make a note to order a mini keg of it for our next Christmas in July celebration. READ ABOUT MEAD Fancy making your own mead? Grab a copy of Make Mead Like a Viking by Jereme Zimmerman. The book offers tips and recipes for making mead, braggot, melomel, Tej and “even Viking grog”, whatever that may be. The book is available on Takealot. A unique and complex beverage Melaurea is Ernst's MMT, made using the champagne method The mobile bottling unit arrives to package Ernst's MMT 34 | Summer 2021 | ontapmag.co.za