Give Lord Rhys Chocolate Mead a try!

Erroll

Thank you for the kind words.

I did make rhubarb from last year’s harvest. It’s aging in my wine closet right now. I’m as anxious as you are, probably more, to make chocolate wine. It probably won’t be this year though. For now I’ll be tending my rhubarb patch and my bonsai vineyard. When they bear fruit, I’ll make wine from it. I won’t be able to start new meads, buy grapes … or make chocolate wine.

Sometimes life makes you attend to other things.

I’ll keep thinking and writing. When things get back to normal, I’ll be starting new winemaking projects – chocolate wine will be at the top of the list! I’ll keep in mind the idea of serving it warm. We all know the old rule: reds at cellar temperature, and whites chilled. We also know the rule doesn’t always work. But how the heck would you apply it to chocolate wine? Someone’s going to have to taste a lot of chocolate wine, to see what the optimal temperature is. That someone might as well be me

Erroll

Thanks for the update! I’ve been reading the various articles you had on the chocolate wine, and was very interested as your style is not just intuitive. Your time in exploring (and explaining) the different elements was dilligent to say the least.

I appreciated Gary’s question, since it was the voice of my innermost thoughts, “So what’s the verdict? Where is he at?”

I hope the rhubarb this year works out, and that things get back on track. A thought on the chocolate wine that I’ve picked up over the years was also in the serving of it warm as sake and some coffee wines are served vs. chilled.

Seanchai

I got to the point where I wanted to make Lord Rhys Chocolate Mead Recipe as is, and a similar chocolate mead using extract. Then I could compare the two and decide between extract or cocoa powder.

I didn’t find good information on how much extract would substitute for a given amount of cocoa, so I planned to taste test extract in milk and compare it to chocolate milk. I would use that to make the chocolate mead from extract to compare against Lord Rhys’.

Not only would I be able to choose between extract and powder, but the experience of doing it would give me a better idea of how much chocolate to add to a wine.

But it all came to a screeching halt last year after a personal upheaval. I’ve started making wine again, but it’s mostly emptying the freezer (the 2008 rhubarb harvest still needs to be fermented) and aging wines that I’ve already got.

I intend to pick up where I left off and make chocolate wine and mead, but I don’t have a time frame yet.

Erroll