I started drinking mead roughly a year ago. The sweet perfume of honey, flowers & ethanol was very inviting & immediately felt in love with it. I didn’t really know where to begin on writing on mead in general, so I decided to go with this local meadery that is somewhat close to where I live. It’s a story about the passion for beekeeping & making quality honey-based products.
History
Intermiel Meadery was founded by a couple of Picardie, France a few years after moving to Quebec in 1969. Christian always had a passion for beekeeping & bought a farm in Mirabel, close to Montreal. His wife & him began with only a hundred hives. They started selling honey in the 80s, then 10 years later followed by producing various alcoholic beverages such as mead, maple eau-de-vie (which could probably now be called Acerum) & ice cider. Nowadays, Intermiel owns thousands hives, a maple farm & an apple orchard. They have received multiple distinctions throughout the years based on the quality of their products as well as the positive role they play in their local community. The couple’s daughter, Éléonore Macle followed the same path as her parents & became the third owner of the company in 2006.
The Farm & the Meadery
Like mentioned earlier, Intermiel Meadery now owns close to 10,000 beehives. They are scattered throughout their fields to source honey from various flower species. The most common are cloves, raspberries, apple blossoms, buckwheat, wildflowers & goldenrod. They will even travel their hives through different parts of the province to be able to get some blueberry flowers. Every flower possess unique aromatic properties in their pollen & nectar to the honey’s flavour profile. All this together allows them to produce around 450,000 Kg of honey each year. This sweet nectar is then used to make plenty of different honey-based delicacies including mead. When they’re not busy with honey, Intermiel makes maple as well as apple products. Cyril Lapeyrie, Éléonore’s husband is the manager of the maple farm & has currently around 19,000 tap allowing to extract the maple’s sap to make syrup & eau-de-vie. The apple orchards hold about 600 trees which are mostly used to make their ice ciders.
Intermiel is proud to be BNQ which certifies their honey to be 100% from Quebec. This same philosophy can be found in their alcohol production. The dozens of different beverages they created are all made with ingredients from the farm. With the help of an oenologist, they seek originality, finesse & elegance through their mead, ice cider as well as maple eau-de-vie.
The Meads
All their meads are pretty popular, even though, this alcohol category is still quite obscure to the public. Médiéval is the most consumed terroir product of the province. It’s also their mead with the most valuable distinctions. At the moment, their collection is comprised of 9 different options.
- Médiéval, an oak-aged liquorous mead made from buckwheat honey.
- ChouChen’n signé Macle, an oak-aged liquorous mead made with apple wine (Cyser).
- Bouquet Printanier, a semi-sweet mead.
- Verge d’Or, a sweet mead.
- Benoîte, a liquorous mead.
- Rosée, a cranberry & rose petals mead.
- Jardins Mellifères, a series of Melomel with 3 variants: Raspberries, Blueberries & Currants.
Their maple products are comprised of a vermouth named 1534 made with maple eau-de-vie, maple wine, blueberries & some spices. They also have Gélinotte, a maple eau-de-vie made with 100% maple sap as well as Geai Bleu, another maple eau-de-vie with blueberries. Macle is the ice cider they elaborate with the apples from their orchard. They make Macle Réserve as well, which is the oak-aged version.
The Reference
More info @intermiel.com
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