The Tasting Room here at St Ambrose is a great place to try out all of the innovative flavors and old favorites our wine and mead makers have been working so hard on for your enjoyment. Whether you’re new to our meadery, you’ve been here a time or two, or, you’re a seasoned pro to bellying up with us again, you’ll find the girls waiting to serve you a complimentary tasting selection of any six of our tasty libations. If you’re new to mead, come on in, and be sure to try a sample of our delicious Dancing Bare Ambrosia. Dancing Bare is a great “cross-over” to the mead side for white wine enthusiasts. A copious blend of white wine grapes and honey, fermented together, Dancing Bare Ambrosia is also known as a pyment.
What’s a Pyment?
A pyment refers to all the constituents of mead blended and then fermented with grapes or grape juice. A pyment can also be produced from sweetening a wine with honey or by mixing wine and mead after fermentation of each has been completed.
The goal of a pyment is to have a wine flavorwith the soft honey finish of a mead, melding complexities for balance in sweetness, acidity and tannin. Any variety of grapes will work to produce a pyment, but we use wine grapes (as opposed to table grapes).
Each year, a grape variety will take on different aromas and flavors, depending upon the growing conditions during the growing season. Factors such as rainfall and temperature have the most significant impact. So, although you can find any number of descriptions of a grapes personal variety, the final qualities of each harvest will not always take on all of the descriptors. The flavor will tell you the story of the season with subtle nuances of flavor, aroma, texture.
The Dancing Bare Difference
Pyment can be made with just one type of grape or can include a blend of grapes or grape juice, depending on the desired characteristics. Our Dancing Bare Ambrosia utilizes the Cayuga and Seyval Blanc grapes, selected for the balance of acidity and sweetness inherent to these varietals. Using our own Star Thistle Honey from our Sleeping Bear Farms very busy bees, the final product is semi sweet with fruity notes, floral undertones, and a crisp finish.
Dancing Bare is at its peak of enjoyment on the porch swing in August or after a full moon skinny dip all summer long. We encourage you to open a bottle in June after you’ve picked up a pound of asparagus from the Harris Farm out on Indian Hill Road and fire up the grill for the ten-pound lake trout you caught the night before. By all means, it also pairs nicely with comfort food and a cozy fire in the midst of winter.
Look for the Bee Goddess label on the beautiful cobalt blue bottle on our shelves or at your favorite wine store. Let the nectar of the hive and the celebrated noble wines of Michigan make you a believer in “All You Mead Is Love”.
With temperatures expected to rise to downright balmy this coming weekend, our Friday night musicians are right on time for a little cabin fever reliever. Barefoot, a new quartet comprised of some of our favorite homegrown talent, will debut right here at St Ambrose, starting at 6pm. With soulful renditions of songs that connect us to memory and each other, Barefoot artfully blends familiar emotional ballads and funky tunes with an upbeat, crowd pleasing, original sound that delivers musically as well as lyrically.
The Band
Chanteuse Jenni Rae captures your heart with her stunning presence and impeccable vocals. Jenni is a classically trained pianist who discovered her voice and knack for music the tender age of 4 & has cultivated a depth to her work that evokes continual goosebumps and demands your attention, anticipating her next verse and begging for an encore.
Supporting Jenni are a cast of characters that all discovered a love for music as young men. On harmonica, Phil Coryell plays intuitively from the deep roots of his musical upbringing, where his father noted a penchant for keeping rhythm watching him toe tap to The Mitch Miller Show as a child. Phil brings a wealth of knowledge and a teacher’s heart to this collaboration; his humor and nurturing ways have infused his harmonizing. Bee Jay Reffitt is a true free spirit, an apiarist at our headquarters, Sleeping Bear Farms, and is all about the upright bass. He says he comes from a long line of barefoot hillbillies and is a lover of organic musical relationships. Native son,
Nathon Lane, rounds out this awesome foursome. Mr Lane, who oversees production of our beautiful honey at Sleeping Bear Farms, is also the brains and brawn behind Barefoot, a football coach and a daddy to two lovely girls. The sensitivity and intention required of him in his daily life plays out in his masterly riffs on guitar and a zen like performance charisma.
This Friday
St Ambrose is thrilled to host the launch of our dear friends who also happen to really bring it. Join us in the tasting room from 69pm on Friday, February 19!
Oh, and Barefoot pairs nicely with a glass of our Dancing Bare Ambrosia or Secret Beach and a charcuterie platter, just sayin.
Let the good times roll, the mission of Mardi Gras, the big party down in the big easy. The tradition of fun and indulgence is well known in much of the world. For some the festival is a rite of passage and for others, a yearly reconnection to a piece of themselves and to history. Parades, food & music representing “joie di vivre”, joy of life, in a cultural hub, where celebrating artful expression is a way of life.
Historically, its origins of revelry have roots to the Roman Empire all the way back in the 4th century. When Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, the leaders chose to embrace local rituals & traditions associated with spring & fertility. These became a last hurrah before the holiday of Lent, where Christians refrained from pleasures, prayed and repented their sins for the 40 days before Easter Sunday, which is where we get Fat Tuesday, the last day to indulge before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. As the Roman influence expanded all over Europe, Christianity and Mardi Gras went with them.
Our Fearless Leader, and owner here at St. Ambrose, Kirk Jones, exudes the vibrant energy of New Orleans as a musician in K Jones & The Benzie Playboyz, a Cajun & Zydeco ensemble beloved around the state of Michigan. Kirk & Sharon take some time each winter to return to their own origins, working with our bees down on the farm, on the banks of the Chocktahatchee Creek, swamp country near the Apalachicola River, in the Panhandle of Florida. We miss his smile & his passion while he’s gone, we are jonesin’ for Jonesy! So we decided to have our own little Mardi Gras, a Paczki Party, here in the tasting room. Come celebrate Fat Tuesday with us!
All day, from 12-7, enjoy a free paczki with the purchase of any draft mead on tap. We’ll have apple, Bavarian crème, lemon, raspberry, cherry & orange crème paczki’s, which we’ll help you pair perfectly with a tasty, bubbly beverage. Tomorrow also starts our Two-For Tuesday Happy Hour, where from 5-6pm you can enjoy a glass of draft mead for just $2 (that’s half off!). We’ve got a few games here, too if you’re feeling competitive and thirsty…We’ll have K Jones tunes on too, so stop on by and get Fat with us!
Thank Goodness it’s Friday! It’s a snow globe kind of day here in the tasting room! The big red barn looks like a postcard and the light is positively radiant~. Tonight we’ve got Giniker playing jazz tunes from 6-9 with the sweet melodious voice of Carie Fowler brought to fullness with the accompaniment of true talents, Steve Stargardt on keyboard & Mike Davis on the big brass sax. If you’re feeling swanky, come on in for a pour from tonights tapster’s, Dawn & Abby.
With Puxatawney Phil forecasting an early spring, February is off to a good start here in the northlands. We at St Ambrose are feeling the fever rising and have our boots on for you to come in from the cold and put a little fire in your belly.
Giniker Jazz tonight 6-9pm
Spend your Big Game Pre-Party with us from 12-5 and enjoy 10% off our 16.9 ounce bottles of draft mead (to go only) and enter to win a T-shirt (Enter all weekend, winner selected Sunday, you don’t have to be present to win but you must enter in person!)
Fat Tuesday (February 9): FREE Pazcki with the purchase of any draft mead, $2 drafts, AND game night! We’re staying open an extra hour (12-7) and we’ve got Apples to Apples & Cards Against Humanity.
Women’s Wellness Wednesday on February 10 from 6-8 pm a night full of chocolate and self- love, good eats & drink features
EVERY “Thirsty” Thursday~ refills on Growlers & Howlers for 35% off
Saturday 2/13 you’ll find Team St Ambrose hanging out at TC Microbrew Fest from 3-10pm
The Cabin Fever Artist Talk #2 at Oliver Arts Center in Frankfort tonight from 5:30-7 featuring hometown hero Peter Payette would be a great way to start your weekend before heading over here for music. http://oliverartcenterfrankfort.org/. And our friends at Crystal Mountain entice us all with their locals only spa specials on Mondays & Tuesdays through March http://www.crystalmountain.com/specials/locals-only-spa-specials.
So, Bee kind, enjoy all the goodness, drink responsibly & strap on your snow shoes and live out the question we all hear “What is there to do here in the winter?”.
The big news? Pardon us, but we want to make sure that everyone knows we have our mead available in convenient 16.9oz bottles for all to enjoy. You can find them online, at stores throughout Michigan, and right here in our tasting room.
Our Drafts
We’ve got five of our honey & pleasure packed draft meads available in 16.9 ounce bottles. A shout out to our new bottling system and our production guys for getting these out of the tanks and into your hands! You’ll find our most loved and innovative flavors have been bottled and are available here in the tasting room, regionally at your favorite shop, and online. Our customers wanted a way to ship or fly with our drafts and we found it! The bottling process allows for all the bubbly fun that makes our pours so unique to cross state lines and time zones because it’s 5 o’clock somewhere!
This shareable size can be a great introduction to trying out yet another flavor to love of our carbonated honey wine or a great way to mix and match your favorites! Our draft meads are a hit in the tasting room and beyond and we are so excited about this newest way to spread the love!
Here in the tasting room you will find these select five flavors bottled, on our shelves & good to go!
Also using some of those friendly probiotics, Razz is slightly sour with just a hint of that luscious raspberry sweetness. Our newest take on raspberry draft mead is sassy enough to make you blush and sweet enough to make you say more, please.
A love song to the peppery ginger root, perfectly accompanied by orange zest, this slightly sour mead is not for the faint of heart!
Coming soon (think spring!) we will add everyone’s favorite, John Lemon, to the bottled varieties available. We’re so excited about it we plan to have a release party! So stay tuned, and until then, stop in, belly up & cheers with us for 5 more ways to enjoy the nectar of the gods…
Cider in Traverse City
Our friends at Taproot Ciders have opened up in Downtown Traverse City! If you’re in town, give them a look sometime.
Winter Beverage Expo
Wuerfel Park in Traverse City’s Chum’s Village will host the 2016 Winter Craft Beverage Expo on Friday, Feb. 5 – featuring St. Ambrose meads and wines and many other Northern Michigan beverages!
The Tasting Room here at St Ambrose is a great place to try out all of the innovative flavors and old favorites our wine and mead makers have been working so hard on for your enjoyment. Whether you’re new to our meadery, you’ve been here a time or two, or, you’re a seasoned pro to bellying up with us again, you’ll find the girls waiting to serve you a complimentary tasting selection of any six of our tasty libations. If you’re new to mead, come on in, and be sure to try a sample of our delicious Dancing Bare Ambrosia. Dancing Bare is a great “cross-over” to the mead side for white wine enthusiasts. A copious blend of white wine grapes and honey, fermented together, Dancing Bare Ambrosia is also known as a pyment.
