Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Champion meadmaker

Well, not champion exactly. More like champion twice removed. I entered a bottle of my prickly pear mead (melomel for the purists out there) in the Comal County Fair this year, and was rewarded with a white ribbon, signifying third place. Which I assume means my stuff is drinkable, and none of the judges went blind.

PricklyPearMead3rdPlace


I've now won twice at the fair, the first being another third-place finish in 2006 for my "Holiday Spice Metheglin," another honey wine with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice. Last year's entry of my jalapeño metheglin didn't place, but to be honest I didn't expect it to. It was quite strong stuff, like drinking liquid fire. An acquired taste at best, but I didn't have anything else ready and figured "what the heck?" I like to think I've improved in my brewing skills over the years.

The weekend was not without some drama, though. Saturday I arrived to look over the winners (I'd breezed through on Thursday to find if I placed, but didn't get a chance to browse beyond that) only to find the wine entries removed with a note saying they'd been "Moved due to vandalism." Apparently on Friday someone broke into the display and removed some of the entries. He then crawled underneath the table supporting the display and proceeded to drink his thieved alcohols. And that bastard had the nerve to leave mine alone. Jerk.

One thing I wish they'd change is to provide contact information on the homemade wine entries or somesuch. Homebrewers are a curious lot, and I'd very much love to trade with the other winners bottles of my mead for samples of their mustang, agarita and other varied wines. Names aren't allowed on the bottles, so I can't even look the entrants up on my own. That bites. Maybe I'll figure out something for next year, but if you're reading this and had some homemade wine in this year's Comal County Fair, drop me a line and we'll talk shop.

Now Playing: The Mamas & the Papas The Best of the Mamas & the Papas

No comments:

Post a Comment