A HONEY OF A WINE : FABLED AS APHRODISIAC, MEAD MAKING COMEBACK.

Byline: Anne Wallace Allen Associated Press 

It's tough to market mead, an ancient beverage made from honey, when modern rules prevent brewers from touting its qualities as an aphrodisiac.

So mead makers promote the honey wine's exotic, fragrant bouquet; its healthful qualities; and its place in 8,000 years of history.

Mead, a lightly flavored wine that has been around since ancient times, is making a comeback of sorts after being overshadowed by its grape-based relatives for years, mead brewers say. They market their beverage as a light, natural after-dinner drink with the healthy properties of honey.

French native Bernard Blachere and his wife Diane Rice opened L'Abeille Honey Winery last autumn in Stowe and hope to produce 10,000 bottles of mead this year.

For Blachere, who learned about mead making from a friend's grandfather as he was growing up in Cassis, near Marseilles, the attraction of the business is practical.

``I like its digestibility,'' he said on a tour of his winery one recent snowy day. Blachere said he had first been attracted to beekeeping, and then slowly learned about mead making as ``the best byproduct of the apiary.''

A brewer who goes by the single name of Kirhan says the appeal of mead is more aesthetic.

``I'm not interested in any other beverage,'' said Kirhan, who co-owns the As You Like It brewery, cafe and gift shop in Fitchburg, Mass. The brewery started making mead in 1993 and now produces several specialty blossom varieties.

``I discovered mead virtually by accident and had considered myself a connoisseur of wines until then,'' Kirhan said. ``I have not drunk a drop of grape wine since then.''

Mead's appeal, practical or otherwise, appears to be catching on slowly. Blachere said he was one of the founders of the Colorado-based American Mead Association, which published a quarterly newsletter until its president was killed in a car crash last summer.

The association is still looking for a new leader. Its last publication listed a few dozen mead breweries, or meaderies, and said it had members in 14 countries.

Many mead brewers are very small. The As You Like It brewery only produces about 30 to 60 gallons a month, Kirhan said.

``We're kind of a fractionated industry - there seem to be a lot of people coming and going,'' said winemaker Paul Wofford at the Bargetto Winery.

Bargetto, in Soquel, Calif., has been making mead for 30 years. With production of 7,000 cases of mead a year, it is probably the largest meadery in the country, Wofford said. It uses about 60 tons of honey a year.

At Blachere's L'Abeille Honey Winery, the brewing process takes about two months. Blachere produces the mead in batches of 1,000 bottles.

L'Abeille buys the honey in large metal drums from a producer in Putnamville and warms it for several days to liquefy it. Then the honey is brewed with spring water and yeast in the basement of L'Abeille's Stowe shop.

Opened bottles of mead last for several weeks refrigerated. Unopened bottles can last for years, Rice said.

Mead brewers like to evoke their beverage's long and storied history. The honey wine appears in accounts of King Arthur's deeds; historians say it was highly popular in Europe until the Middle Ages were drawing to a close; and beers and ales surpassed it when they became cheaper to produce.

Mead drinkers long believed that the wine had aphrodisiac qualities, but producers are barred by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from making that claim about their products.

Wofford said he has read claims in different publications that mead does indeed inspire lovers.

``I would hate to say anything that would negate history,'' he said.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1 -- color) Bernard Blachere corks a bottle of mead at his store in Stowe, Va. He hopes to attract modern tastes to the storied wine made from honey and touted for its healthful qualities.

(2) Diana Rice and her husband, Bernard Blachere, stand next to store's beehive.

Associated Press