Microbrewed Adventures (18 page)

I had to remember to breathe as I excitedly found myself poring over the original notes of perhaps the 20th century's greatest mead historian and professional and amateur mead maker.

What else would I find inside these castle walls? Were there other bottles of old mead hidden? Very few knew for sure, until I discovered a dusty rack and a box full of mead made over 50 years ago.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. For a moment I need to impress upon you the small gestures and the impulses of a moment in 1983 that had led me to the opposite side of the world seeking whatever knowledge of mead might exist.

It was December, and I wanted to be somewhere warm and have the time to appreciate it. I had totally dedicated the previous summer in Colorado to researching and writing the manuscript for my book
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing
. I had rarely seen the light of day. With my manuscript off to the publisher, I fulfilled the promise to myself to go somewhere warm.

Two weeks into my stay in New Zealand I found myself at the top of the South Island, near the town of Nelson. I had been visiting the recently established RocMac Brewery, the nation's one and only microbrewery at the time. For one reason or another, the brewer and I had begun a discussion about mead. On a whim, he suggested I go have a look at the stock of wines carried by the bottle shop across the street from the brewery.

“I'll be a blue-nosed gopher,” I thought to myself as I discovered a bottle of something called Havill's Mazer Mead. There was a telephone number on the bottle and I did not hesitate to ask the shopkeeper if I might make a call to this meadery.

Within minutes I was on the phone talking to Leon Havill. “Where is Rangiora?” I asked, as that was listed on the label as the bottle's source. Leon
had only to reply “near Christchurch,” and I was making air reservations five minutes later. I was suddenly leaving the next day for a part of New Zealand I'd originally had no intention of visiting. Christchurch? Rangiora? Havill's Mazer Mead? Was I nuts? I had second thoughts, but it was too late.

The visit with Leon and Gay Havill was the beginning of a long and warm friendship. Leon's mead was excellent, and his knowledge and experience were inspiring. During the telling of many tales (all true, I'm sure) he showed me a book about mead he'd found, written in 1948 by a Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gayre, called
Wassail! In Mazers of Mead.
I was fascinated by the depth of historical knowledge this book contained.

It was over a year later that I found a copy of Gayre's book through a rare-book search service. The price seemed high, a painful $80, but I wasn't about to lose the opportunity. I read it with great interest. I continued my own mead-making, somewhat more inspired, but it wasn't until 1985 that I had a strange impulse to wonder if this Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gayre was still alive. Perhaps if he was, he might be interested in participating as a speaker at the American Homebrewers Association's National Homebrewers Conference.

Where does one begin?

I called my friend and advisor Michael Jackson, wondering if he might have the resources to track the whereabouts of Colonel Gayre. Michael called one week later to report that the publisher of the book had gone out of business decades ago, but he had some other leads he still needed to pursue. I couldn't imagine success at this point, but then I didn't know Michael, the world's number-one fermentation detective, as well as I do today. He was in hot pursuit of something, and one week later he had a telephone number for me, saying, “I don't know if it will work, but it's supposed to be his home phone number.” I couldn't quite believe it. And Michael hadn't finished. “Oh yes, by the way, he lives in a castle in Scotland, so I'm told.”

It was too late to call that day, but early the next morning I direct dialed the number. A rather formal-sounding “Hello, Minard Castle” was the response.

“May I speak to Mr. Gayre, please?”

“This is he.”

I was a bit dumbfounded. I had anticipated a secretary to answer. It was Lieutenant Colonel Gayre. The guy who'd written the book I was holding in my hand, published nearly 40 years ago. My mind briefly flashed back to New Zealand and that original unassuming conversation with the brewmaster at
RocMac Brewery, the impulsive trip to visit Havill's meadery and a freak finding of an original copy of this book. Now, several years later, I was speaking with the author.

I briefly explained who I was and where I was from, and asked whether he would consider attending our convention to speak on mead. I had no idea how old this man was (he was 76 at the time). He simply replied, “Yes I would.”

Seventeen passionate friends of mead privately donated $1,200 in order to cover the expenses of his travel to Colorado, as the American Homebrewers Association was in no position to come up with that kind of money at the time.

Colonel Gayre attended the 1985 AHA convention, and from that visit the Association of Brewers made arrangements to reprint his book, retitled
Brewing Mead
. Before he departed, the colonel gave me two picture postcards of his castle and invited me to visit, should I ever be in Scotland.

That was in 1985. For eight years a visit to the castle had been on my list of things to do.

This is the abbreviated story of my visit to the home of the 20th century's most knowledgeable, passionate and accomplished mead maker.

I arrived at Minard Castle on a cool, rainy and typically Scottish spring
day. The imposing castle gate heightened the promise of what might lie within the high walls.

Minard Castle

With a view of Loch Fyne bordering the “backyard,” Colonel Gayre's son, Reinold, and Reinold's wife, Marion, graciously received me. My arrival turned out to be quite auspicious, as no sooner had I been shown to my room (which was nearly the size of my own house) than I hurried down to one of the castle libraries, where a small celebration of the colonel's 86th birthday had commenced.

Unfortunately, the strokes he had suffered several years earlier had left Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gayre in poor health, but he continued his tradition of enjoying a glass of mead with lunch every day. I had brought two bottles of my own mead to share with him. Little had I known they would be birthday gifts.

I spent two full days with the Gayre family. Their hospitality was gratefully received, and Reinold and Marion's help in locating what was left of Colonel Gayre's mead files led me to some important insights about mead.

I had the freedom to roam among the castle's numerous rooms, most filled with antiques, artifacts, paintings, books, cantilevered staircases, majestic fireplaces, long carpets and coats of arms. Every room seemed appointed with history. I learned much about the colonel during my brief stay. Mead was a relatively small part of his long and active life. During World War II he
worked in military intelligence against the Nazis in Germany. After the war he was assigned as Chief of Education and Religious Affairs for Germany. He had held a similar position in postwar Italy as well. His specialty was ethnology with related study and work in anthropology, archeology, biology and genealogy. In the late 1940s he published his book
Wassail! In Mazers of Mead
, a cultural and ethnological study of mead tracing its origins back to the Middle Ages and beyond. At about that time Colonel Gayre established and assumed the role of managing director of Mead Makers Ltd. of Gulval in Cornwall, England.

Lt. Colonel Robert Gayre (left), son Reinold Gayre (right)

Mead Makers became a commercial meadery, flourishing for several years before its demise in the mid-1950s. Housed in a refurbished abandoned flour mill, the company grew herbs, made mead, sold mead-making kits, showcased their products in a visitor's center and operated a grand mead hall, where exotic banquets were offered combining mead cookery with melage (vintage) meads. Melages were always assigned to the company's mead. St. Bartholomew's Day, on August 24, was celebrated annually with great ceremony.

Sack mead, metheglin, sack metheglin, pyment, hippocras, sack brochet, cyser and melomel were regularly made at Gulval. Preaching that mead was the liquor of the upper classes and the gourmet, Gayre promoted the tradition of old English mead cookery and mead at every opportunity. An old copy of his booklet
Mead Hall Cookery
describes in appetizing and fanciful detail several recipes such as Prawn Sack Mead Soup, Pheasant Hippocras Soup, Cyser Cream of Sole Soup, Oyster Pyment Soup, Rabbit cooked in Melomel, Cyser Omelet and Trevylor Mead Sauce.

Gayre noted in one of several articles he authored in the 1940s that “ambrosia” and “nectar of the gods” referred to ancient meads and were the terms used to describe the best of the best. We still use these terms today, but forget they originally referred to mead.

Mead Makers also harvested their own honey and used it until the price of imported Australian honey could be had for one-hundredth the price of the lighter and more delicious English honey.

Success at Mead Makers lasted only a few years. In 1955 the mead hall, herb garden and meadery and the brief popularity of mead were abandoned, it is thought due largely to the reduction of imported wine tariffs. While these events surely had a profound effect on the popularity and sales of Gayre's mead, Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey told me that during the final years of the meadery, inexpensive and strongly flavored Australian eucalyptus honey was used in Mead Maker's mead. The unusual flavors, he thought, might have contributed to mead's falling out of favor with the English.

Silver Mazer Mead Chalices

Gayre's autobiography mentions only briefly his mead endeavors, attributing their failure to quarreling among the directors of the company.

Regardless of the reasons for its demise, Mead Makers and Gayre brought great attention to mead and mead making. Several stories about it were published in magazines of the time. The spirit of the articles mirrored the current enthusiasm and attention given to today's microbrewery phenomenon in the United States. Except among a few friends of mead, the western world was to forget Gayre's great accomplishments and abandon the culture of mead. Gulval had been the center of a brief revival.

I recall how Colonel Gayre sparkled during his visit to Colorado in 1985 when he appeared at the American Homebrewers Association National Conference. His small audience was avid and appreciative. He discussed his experiences and mead wisdom, much as he must have done 35 years earlier when he addressed a meeting of beekeepers in England. At the American Homebrewers Association conference he emphasized the need for sanitation and strong yeast strains and the destructive nature of oxygen and oxidation. The following excerpt from a presentation Gayre made in 1950 indicates the passion he had always had for mead: