St. Ambrose Cellars

Open: Year-Round

Mead is an ancient beverage made with honey and water in its simplest form. In ancient cultures, honey was mixed with water and left to ferment with wild yeasts. The natural pollens in the honey supplied the nutrients required by the yeast to multiply and convert the sugars into alcohol. The resulting meads were most likely drunk while still in the fermentation stage and were slightly bubbly.It predates written history and was the beverage of royalty.

Mead can be expressed as dry, semi, or sweet. Some of our meads are fermented with honey combined with fruits, herbs, and/or spices. Every honey has different floral and spice notes as every wine grape has different characteristics, which expresses itself in the final product.We have our own press to squeeze fresh juice from local grapes, pears, and cherries for our honey and fruit meads, which are called Melomels. We just simply call them "Mels".

Michigan now produces some very excellent wine grapes which we use in combination with different varieties of honey made from our bees.Honey and wine grape combination meads are called Pyments.One good blend is our "Dancing Bare" mead /pyment, fermented with excellent Riesling grapes and Star Thistle honey. We won an award at the Mazer Cup international mead competition in Boulder, Colorado with our 2010 vintage.Meads made with herbs are called Metheglins. We are currently fermenting an Elderflower mead that compliments the floral notes of our Star Thistle honey.