Salal Mead - Palmer's

19.5% Alc./Vol.

Palmer's Meadery, the home of Esquimalt Vermouth. Our meads are exclusively sold online and at the Meadery in Nanaimo. In addition to our main Esquimalt business, we are also dabbling in a bit of small scale farming, growing garlic, artisanal crafts, honey and mead making. Super small-scale experimentations into the world of traditional mead making. If you want to better understand how Esquimalt is made, it all starts with mead.

A cousin to wild blueberries, Salal Berries are the dominant understory of the forests of Vancouver Island. Fruity, jammy with a bit of earthy funk. We took our base mead, fortified it with a bit of spirit to 19.5% Alc./Vol. and then crushed 100 kg of wild salal berries into a jammy pulp before aging them on the base mead for 2 months. This Salal Mead is the base we use for Esquimalt's Kina-Salal, but this is a much more approachable and crushable variation kind of alike a lighter wild berry liqueur that when served on ice, is a sheer delight after a filling meal. Salal berries and a bit of honey sweetness with the faintest bit of ginger, star anise, and grapefruit for a little botanical ooh-la-la. Doesn't get much better than that.