Comments on: Anybody know where I can buy a bottle of mead in NYC?

Question: Anybody know where I can buy a bottle of mead in NYC?

Afroblanco — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:28:35 -0800

Anybody know where I can buy a bottle of mead in NYC?

By: caddis

caddis — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:31:40 -0800

I don't think you need to go any place special. Most decent wine shops will have it.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:33:28 -0800

I dunno, I've found it to be a pretty rare item. Any suggestions will be welcome.

And if nobody knows specifically where to get mead, perhaps someone could suggest the most ginormously huge wine/liquor store they know of, in the hopes that it may have mead.

By: philotes

philotes — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:39:47 -0800

Astor Wines & Spirits on Lafayette at 4th St. According to their website they have mead (Including one called "Brooklyn Buzz Mead" ... awesome). While you're in the neighborhood, swing by Max Brenner's for the best chocolate experience of your life.

By: ocherdraco

ocherdraco — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:51:36 -0800

Are you worried about our mead toast tomorrow night?

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:56:11 -0800

Naw, they got plenty at The Ginger Man. This is a separate issue.

By: ocherdraco

ocherdraco — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:57:32 -0800

Oh, good. Carry on, then.

(And I always found Grand Liquors in Astoria to have excellent selection of alcoholic beverages across the spectrum.)

By: jeb

jeb — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:00:01 -0800

I'm pretty sure they have some mead at Spuyten Duyvil Grocery in Williamsburg. Its on Bedford. Your profile shows you in the LES so that's pretty close.

By: TheNewWazoo

TheNewWazoo — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:07:22 -0800

Accept no substitutes. Dogfish Head's Midas Touch is the only commercial mead worth your dollar.

As I live in Atlanta, the best I can offer is this map of DFH sales locations.

Happy fishing!

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:11:31 -0800

The best place I've found is U.N. Liquor, on the east side of Manhattan, as they carry my favorite mead, from the Long Island Meadery, which is straight-up real honey wine. A lot of other places sell this awful fucking white wine with honey and spices and call it mead, which is a little like stuffing a piece of malted barley into a bottle of pruno and calling it "whisky". If you see that stuff, usually with an extra "e" tacked on to the end and served in a white bottle, don't buy it! The only downside to U.N. Liquor is that they'll often have one of the flavored Long Island Meads rather than the simple basic one. The flavored ones are great and all (the root beer one is strangely compelling), but I assume you'd just want the basic flavor? Maybe you could call ahead first and see what they have.

Honeyrun's Ragnar's Reserve isn't too bad as a backup (though more spiced, less about the regular honey flavor shining through), and they sell that at a few places -- the cheapest I've found it has been at Warehouse Wines & Liquors, down on Broadway and 7th-ish. Oh, and on preview, I see Astor has the Honeyrun, too. I've never had the Brooklyn Buzz or the Lurgashall, so I can't speak to those.

As a third alternative, you want a bottle of my homebrew? It started out kind of rough a couple of months ago, but it's aging pretty well; I think in another few months, it'll be pretty killer. It's made from wildflower honey, straight from Union Square's farmer's market! It's also the only mead in town that's so classy that it's bottled in recycled Corona bottles!

By: rmless

rmless — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:14:08 -0800

Bierkraft in Park Slope has this mix of mead and gueuze, which you might like.

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:18:44 -0800

(PS - this, the Bunratty Meade, is the one I think I was thinking about in my above warning. It is kind of fucking awful.)

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:33:38 -0800

(PPS - both TheNewWazoo's and rmless's suggestions, a mixture of beer and mead, is called a "braggot" -- this is a handy word to know if you need to freestyle rap, as it's the only other word I know that rhymes with "maggot" yet is not homophobic)

By: knile

knile — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:04:25 -0800

This comment will not be as helpful as I'd hoped:
I was going to come in to recommend Vintage New York on Broome st, but they apparently have closed. I know that they carried wines from Lakewood, a winery upstate that makes a few meads. They don't appear to penetrate far downstate, except for New Paltz... Good luck?

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:24:39 -0800

Ack! Sorry it took me so long to resolve this. Anyway, I wound up going to Astor because they're right around the corner from me. They do indeed have a few varieties of mead - in particular, I recommend the Lurgashall's.

However, I want to thank everybody who gave me recommendations! The solstice is coming up in a few months, so I'll no doubt again be in the market for some mead.