Pyment — tasting notes & food pairings

Pyment

Pyment is a mead made by fermenting honey together with grapes or grape must — a honey-and-grape hybrid that sits squarely between mead and wine. Where a traditional mead ferments honey diluted with water, a pyment replaces some or all of that water with fresh grape juice, so the honey and the grape ferment as one. The result is a pale-gold to garnet drink, typically around 8 to 14 percent alcohol, that smells and tastes of vinous grape lifted by floral, nectar-sweet honey — bright grape acidity and gentle tannin threaded through warm, aromatic honey character. It can be finished bone dry or lusciously sweet, still or lightly sparkling, made from white or red grapes, and it is one of the oldest and most wine-like branches of the mead family, at home both as an aperitif and beside cheese, charcuterie and roast fare.

Sweet-tart11% ABV

Pale gold to garnet and honey-bright, pyment leads with fresh grape and vine fruit and a winey lift wrapped in floral, nectarous honey and beeswax, with a crisp, grapey acidity and gentle tannin giving it a structured backbone plain honey mead lacks. Body and sweetness swing with the maker's hand — a honey-forward pyment drinks round, floral and mead-like, a grape-forward one closer to a honeyed wine, and it can be made white, rosé or red — and it finishes clean, off-dry to dry, warm at around 8 to 14 percent alcohol, with grape and honey echoing together. Serve it lightly chilled as an aperitif or alongside cheese, charcuterie and roast fare.