Rising Veil Cocktail

They say that Samhain is the time when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. On one side exists the terrestrial plane. On the other lies the astral plane, the land of the dead. On this liminal night, the two realms become joined and sentient beings may float freely between them. The living may convene with their ancestors and gain valuable insights about their lives and their futures. 

Perhaps this is why the consumption of alcohol was, and continues to be, an integral part of the holiday. What better lubricant to allow one to slip between worlds as they dance by the light of the fire?

Mead was a drink often consumed at these festivities, a honey wine that boasts to be the oldest of spirits. It was a liquor nearly lost to time, though modern day fascinations and a hefty dose of ancient anglophilic fantasy have thrust the drink back into resurgence. Just yesterday I learned of a new Viking themed mead bar in Southeast Portland, replete with swords and drinking horns, founded by who am sure to be hardcore D&D players. In Chrissie Manion Zearpoor’s book The Art of Mead Tasting and Food Pairing, she attributes mead’s modern resurgence to the craft beer crowd.

“It is largely these sophisticates and experienced craft beer drinkers along with cider and saké drinkers who are now turning to mead, and their interest and demand is driving an enormous and exciting renaissance of meadmaking in the United States”

– Chrissie Manion Zearpoor, THE ART OF MEAD Tasting AND FOOD PAIRING

Chrissie from Kookoolan Farms in Yamhill, OR told me her interest in the mythic libation began in high school reading Beowulf. She then found herself on a years-long mission to taste a glass and satisfy her curiosities. What did it taste like? Honey? Wine? Fortunately for us, she was never able to get her hands on a bottle in the vodka soaked late 20th century, so she resorted to the next logical solution-get fermenting. First at home, then commercially, then to great acclaim. She has now quite literally written the book on mead appreciation.

We stopped by Chrissie’s and her husband’s farm on our way back from a trip to the coast with the expressed purpose of buying a bottle of her award winning mead. It was great speaking with her briefly about her about something she has such passion for. I said “So it seams like you’re an expert on the subject” to which she furrowed her brow and replied “Yeah, I guess I am!” Elegance is their flagship mead that I purchased, but I was unaware she would send me home with two more bottles from other American meadmakers as well as her 400 page tome just for stopping by! I let her know that I planned to do some cooking with her mead, hoping it wouldn’t be considered a sacrilegious act. “Not at all,” she said “I like to cook with a bottle in one hand while I’m drinking another one.”

 After getting home and opening the bottle, I was pleasantly surprised to find this had to be the most lovely and complex mead I had tried, much more nuanced than the one I picked up in the Edinburgh farmers market. Made from only water, honey, and wine yeast, it’s treated like Chardonnay and aged in French oak casks. Maybe the nuance has something to do with her adding royal jelly, bee pollen, propolis, and beeswax to the ferment. It very much exudes honey flavor, exhibits a touch of sweetness, and has that true intoxicating complexity of a pure aroma in the way I’d experienced fresh ground whole spices for the first time. As she describes it, the spirit has “aromas of oak, wood, beeswax and tobacco; noticeable alcohol heat, and a long finish”. 

“The troop was in joyance; mead-glee greater Neath arch of the ether not ever beheld”

– Beowulf

It wound up playing a large part in the conception of our Samhain feast. I made a mead mustard for the turnip soup, reduced it with pomegranate juice and spices to glaze a roast chicken and served it with a meady version of sauce Normandie. When it came to creating a cocktail, this mead was the star ingredient I wanted the other elements to serve rather than obscure. I decided to make a spirit-forward cocktail that would remain simple in order to show off each component. Rye whiskey sounded right as a base liquor, with its spicy notes that would double down on the oak while cutting the sweetness of the mead. This immediately took me to a Manhattan with its classic ratio and infinite variations. So I used that 2:1 ratio with the mead in place of sweet vermouth, and instead of bitters decided to use an 8x concentration of “Fire Spirit Tea” gifted to us by the Rex Apothecary. The tea is of particular interest – a loose mix of licorice root, rosemary, clove, ginger, cinnamon, caraway and fennel. As described, it is meant to help you waft into the ether and commune with your ancestors-I would imagine doubly so with the addition of a bit of booze. The licorice root adds an ephemeral lingering sweetness without including any sugar, as it contains the compound glycyrrhizin. Between that and the honey aroma, the drink hints at deep sweetness without involving much actual sucrose. I decided to leave this one unadorned, but if you think of a good garnish please do let me know in the comments!

This cocktail is a culmination of local Oregon talents. A Portland rye whiskey from Eastside Distilling, combined with an Yamhill Mead from Kookoolan Farms, along with a tea blend from Rex Apothecary in Eugene. It makes a guy proud to be an Oregonian, though I’m sure I’m classified as an invader. Either way, it’s good to be here.

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