by stambrose | May 17, 2016 | Tasting Room
I am a strong bird.
It has been cold. The wind rattles our nest. This meadery seems to be busy. People come and go and gawk. The egg is cold. The twigs are fragile. The people come. The night is cold.
But I am a strong bird.
In hindsight, I may have picked a more protected area. Above a porch that does not have so much traffic or in a place where the wind was less harsh. I may have built my home in that barn I see sometimes or in the trees behind this building. Hindsight, however, is behind me. I must focus on the future. And I am a strong bird.
I wonder if my egg will be strong. I hope that it will be. It will soar among the those trees and pick worms from the dusty lot near its birthplace and perhaps it will build a nest someday, perhaps in the barn that looks so warm compared to here. I hope it will be a strong bird.
It is open mic night, and the people are arriving. They will point their odd little black boxes at me and snap the lights in my eyes and I will stare, braced against the coming cold of the evening, and warm my egg. Because I am a strong bird.
Who would like a glass of mead.
by stambrose | Apr 27, 2016 | Live Music, Mead, Tasting Room
Here comes the sun…
The bees are buzzin in our fields and you can be too, this Friday, as our old friend John Lemon returns to our taps this weekend.
As draft meads go in the tasting room, this one seems to have a cult-like following, not unlike it’s namesake. We have been awaiting its return for many moons and couldn’t be happier to re-release it on the same day our “house band”, Alfredo, hopes to have its cd release party, as part of our Friday Night Music Series. While its up to the goddess of fed ex to deliver their goods on time, our Mazers promise to have loads of our lavish lemon flowing all day long.
Join us starting at
noon for an all day happy hour, where glasses of all our draft meads will be half off to celebrate the return of the “prodigal sun”…. Just in time for Beltane, the halfway mark between vernal equinox and summer solstice! And join us for the cream on top,
Alfredo Improvisational Quartet, from 6-9, with those happy hour specials continuing on into the evening.
As always, drink responsibly, soak it all up with one of our delicious food pairings and bring your DD– we’ve got Sassy Sarsaparilla– a non-alcoholic Honey and Chaga beverage, on tap, for them, too!
by stambrose | Apr 22, 2016 | Tasting Room
If you’ve always wanted to test out your singing chops in front of an audience, but you haven’t yet found the nerve, you’re in luck!
Beginning Tuesday May 3, St Ambrose Tasting Room will be hosting an open mic from 5-8pm each Tuesday evening. If you’re a seasoned performer (or band), we welcome you, too. Singers, comedians, poets, mimes and jugglers also welcome; variety is the spice of life. We’ll provide an amp and a mic, all our love and support and of course a little liquid courage if you should need it. You should have a basic understanding of how to use the equipment, as we won’t have a sound tech on hand.
Starting at 4pm each Tuesday, performers are welcome to sign up on the clipboard available at the tasting counter, in person only please.
Our tasting room is a great space for performers; each Friday night, all year through, we showcase many talents from around the region. These musicians tell us again & again how much they appreciate our small but charming atmosphere & audience and all the good vibes buzzing around this space. Off the beaten path, we are a great stop on your way home from work, after a day at the beach, or as your main destination for the day.
We’ve got gourmet bites that pair perfectly with our ample assortment of estate meads and wines, and when the weather allows, we have bean bag toss games, Adirondack chairs, and fireflies to set the stage for relaxation. Feel free to kick off your shoes and do some cartwheels in our ample lawn, and listen to a little night music as the sun sets behind the big red barn.
In the tradition of an old fashioned Speakeasy combined with a little bit of Hee Haw, our Open Mic Series here at St Ambrose might just be the best thing to happen to Tuesdays in awhile. In addition to spotlighting up and coming performance artists, we’ll also pass the hat for a community supported donation to local organizations that serve our neighbors in need.
Each week, the tasting room staff will select a worthy cause and share their mission and pass the hat around to all you fine folks. And then we’ll send out a donation with everyone’s name on it. And it will be just as great, if not better, than the rush you get from belting out your tunes, or laughing at your sister’s husband’s stand-up routine.
Come check us out on Tuesdays from 5-8pm starting May 3.
by stambrose | Apr 13, 2016 | Tasting Room
For National Wine Month we thought we’d help you sample some of ours by offering Friday Night Flights – A curated selection of four of our wines, paired perfectly with a tasty palate-pleaser.
This week we’ve got a copious peach, raw honey and 2014 Riesling compote, served over moist and delicious pound cake from
Crescent Bakery in Frankfort.
Our stainless steel aged
Chardonnay,
Late Harvest Vignoles,
Pinot Grigio and
Royal Reserve Mead will be paired with this dessert. The compote will highlight flavor, complexities and balance of the wines. Food will be prepared in-house, and available
Friday night during music from
6-9pm, and throughout the weekend as supplies last.
If you purchase 2 or more bottles of one of these featured in the flight, you can get a 10% discount off the purchase price.
We will also the wonderful music of
Blair Miller to accompany this event!
by stambrose | Apr 8, 2016 | Tasting Room
April is Wine Month, and what better way to say “Yes, Please” to more wine than by trying out four of our own with our Friday Night Flights? Each weekend this month, we are featuring a flight of four carefully selected vintages and then pairing them with a different palate pleasing specialty food offering every Friday night, and throughout the weekend (while supplies last!).
Should you decide to purchase a bottle of each of these together, you will be rewarded at the point of sale with 10% off (offer available only on all four)!
This week boasts a rich and creamy Herbed Brie Soup with ciabatta croutons made with lovely loaves from Crescent Bakery in Frankfort. Can you say yum? The flight of two white wines and two reds, including our house specialties Secret Beach (white) and Cottage Red, rounded out with 2011 Riesling Reserve and the Cabernet Franc are sure to titillate your taste buds as a sip of each will bring out complex varietal finishes and subtle nuances to compliment the smooth but powerful brie cheese.
The soup, made by our in house gourmet guru, Crystal, has been brought to full flavor with fresh basil, thyme and a generous splash of the 2011 Riesling Reserve. This Riesling is the driest of all our Rieslings and balances out the richness of the vegetable stock and cream based soup with just a hint of tang from its acidity.
Soup’s On at 6 pm just as the music from Acoustic Dynamite begins to flow. Friday Night Flights for this week will be $14, which include four 2+ ounce pours of our well-crafted & award winning wines and a hearty serving of Herbed Brie Soup and Ciabatta Croutons. Bon Apetit!
by stambrose | Feb 24, 2016 | Tasting Room
Hi, search engine visitor! We’re glad you’ve stumbled upon this post, but it’s really old – so mosey on over to our events page and see what we’ve got planned for February 2020!
Here at St Ambrose, we are missing the buzz of the bees as they retreat & reboot down on the farm in the Florida Panhandle with the boss man and Mrs. Jones. Winter being what it is here in the northlands, the honey bees become snowbirds and travel by the semi loads, tucked safely into their bee boxes, while visions of sunny honey combs dance in their heads. The team down there help restore the worker bee population and tend to the queens. Boss man gets to return to his roots, working directly with his beloved bees, while the idea factory that is his visionary mind, keeps churning out ways to grow and keep the buzz alive.
We love & miss him! But while the cat’s away…. these mice decided to throw a party!
Leap Year Jig
It is Leap Year, after all! You’re probably asking yourself what exactly does one celebrates on Leap Year, right? So we did a little research, digging around to discover just what the big deal is, and we were pretty fascinated by the origins of this day that only comes every four years! It’s really a mathematical equation that seeks balance, something winemakers strive towards also. So we’ve got that in common. But it’s a whole lot more of a smarty pants concept than this blogger can spell out, so I’m letting Wikipedia break it down for you, dear reader!
A leap year (also known as an intercalary year or a bissextile year) is a year containing one additional day (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, a month) added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have the same number of days in each year drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track. By inserting (also called intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is called a common year.
For example, in the Gregorian calendar, each leap year has 366 days instead of the usual 365, by extending February to 29 days rather than the common 28. Similarly, in the lunisolar Hebrew calendar, Adar Aleph, a 13th lunar month is added seven times every 19 years to the twelve lunar months in its common years to keep its calendar year from drifting through the seasons.
The name “leap year” comes from the fact that while a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar normally advances one day of the week from one year to the next, the day of the week in a leap year will advance two days (from March onwards) due to the extra day added at the end of February (thus “leaping over” one of the days in the week). For example, Christmas fell on Tuesday in 2001, Wednesday in 2002, and Thursday in 2003 but then “leapt” over Friday to fall on a Saturday in 2004.
In the Gregorian calendar, the current standard calendar in most of the world, most years that are multiples of 4 are leap years. In each leap year, the month of February has 29 days instead of 28. Adding an extra day to the calendar every four years compensates for the fact that a period of 365 days is shorter than a tropical year by almost 6 hours. This calendar was first used in 1582.
Some exceptions to this basic rule are required since the duration of a tropical year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Over a period of 4 centuries, the accumulated error of adding a leap day every 4 years amounts to about 3 extra days. The Gregorian calendar therefore removes three leap days every 400 years, which is the length of its leap cycle. This is done by removing February 29 in the three century years (multiples of 100) that cannot be exactly divided by 400. The years 2000 and 2400 are leap years, while 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500 are common years. By this rule, the average number of days per year is 365 + 1⁄4 − 1⁄100 + 1⁄400 = 365.2425. The rule can be applied to years before the Gregorian reform (the proleptic Gregorian calendar), if astronomical year numbering is used.
(Thank you, Wiki!)
Pretty great reason to let us pour you a glass of your favorite fermented beverage, don’t you agree? On Friday night, February 26, we’ll do just that while leaping. Seriously, come see for yourself! Because on Friday, Alfredo Improvisational Quartet will be jamming into the night with their hot licks!
Alfredo brings the thirsty to the well like the Pied Piper. St Ambrose is always hoppin’ when these boys assemble. We’re pretty sure the mead tastes better during & after they’ve been here, from all the vibration of the music and good vibes passed around. Happy to help us celebrate the leap in the time and space continuum, they’re staying a bonus hour, in honor of the bonus day. We’ll get this party started at 6PM and the mead and the music will flow until 10PM.
Make sure you bring your appetite, because we’re here to whet it. We’re rolling three deep with our palate pleasing pairings for the party! (Say that 3 times quickly. Go ahead. We’ll wait…)
Check us out!
A Little Something: small plate featuring Sleeping Bear Farms hypnotic honey mustard, a fresh and funky jerky pate, pretzel twists galore and oven-baked, multi-grain, gluten free crackers for $4.
A Little Something More: Tasty, local, cured meats, fancy cheeses, & a collection of fermented and pickled veggies served with those oven baked, multi-grain, gluten free crackers for $8.
A Whole Lotta Something: We like to raise a loving cup to this moveable feast fit for a Mead Weilding Viking. It includes a piquant array of cured meats, aged cheese, pickled veggies, jerky pate`, brie wedges with a blackberry honey drizzle, relishes and crackers for $14.
And, as if you needed any more reasons to sparkle on over here Friday night, we’ve got the Dancing Bare Ambrosia on tap! That’s right–we’ve added bubbles to an already perfect blend of fermented honey & grapes! There’s also a brand new draft mead waiting for you that we like to call Smoove, because it is! Supple and sweet as honey, this gingery peach carbonated melomel is reminiscent of our Royal Reserve (which was aged in bourbon barrels for the ultimate in smoothness.) Smoove puts a little fire in your belly, coming in at around 10% ABV, reminding you to savor the flavor and always drink responsibly.
Which brings us to our final newsworthy paragraph: The waning moon on Friday will be 86.53% full. If you should find yourself near enough to ski or snowshoe your way, over the river, through the woods, under La Bella Luna, to the party, we’ll not only give you a high five, we’ll also give you 10% off— AND…. if you were born on February 29 in 1994 or earlier we’ve got a goody bag with your name on it, so show us your I.D. and collect on the goodness that awaits you, Leap Year Baby.
