Mead is thought to be the world’s oldest alcoholic drink, dating as far back as 7000BC to China.  Mead is honey wine (a fermented drink made from honey, water, and yeast). While it’s similar to beer in that it can involve other flavor additions such as fruit, grains, and spices, it stands in a category all its own with alcohol ranging from 8-20 percent. 

Despite the higher alcohol level, mead is considered healthier than wine and beer as it contains honey which is easier to metabolize and has natural antiseptic and antibacterial properties. Mead also has high antioxidant properties making it naturally sterile, lasting almost forever, unlike wine or beer.  Due to this, very few sulfites need to be used in the mead-making process to preserve the wine which is another benefit of mead.

Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery

I have not had much mead so was immediately intrigued when I spotted Greg Fischer, owner of Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery, pouring mead at a recent Chocolate Tasting for Morton Arboretum.  I went over and proceeded to try almost everything he had on hand.  Wild Blossom produces several mead categories including Semi-Dry, Semi-Sweet, Sweet, and Specialty Meads as well as a few traditional wines made from grapes.  Fascinated, I set up time with Greg and Scott Moyers (VP of Sales) to dig in deeper to the world’s oldest fermented drink.

Greg has been making mead most of his life in various parts of the world and started his own Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery in 2000. Located in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, he currently makes 10,000 gallons of mead a year and also has 100 of his own bee hives.  The hives are in plains and prairies of the Midwest.

The Bees, Trees, and Flowers

When people talk about wine, they often refer to “terroir”, that somewhat elusive concept combining soil, climate, and weather (among many other elements).  Mead is similar in that bees contribute their own version of terroir based on what flowers they pollinate and where those flowers are located.  For example, Scott told me that buckwheat pollination creates honey flavors of molasses.  Black locust tree pollination creates water-white honey while Linden and Basswood trees contribute to floral and minty notes in the mead.  Chicory creates a light amber honey while clover lends a touch of raisin and floral notes.

While not many studies exist on how different soil types impact honey flavor, Greg said that there are big flavor variations between the same honey from different areas.

Incredibly, Greg also said that it takes one bee pollinating 2 million flowers in order to produce a pound of honey.  One bee hive typically produces 70 pounds of honey in a year with a hive of bees needing to fly 55,000 miles to produce a pound of honey.

The Mead Process

Mead is made with two fermentations. The first fermentation converts the honey’s sugar to alcohol to create the base honey while the second fermentation is where Greg adds the fruit mix into the blend (creating the flavor profile).  Tart fruit works best with mead as it balances out the richness of honey. Most of Greg’s meads are around 8% alcohol but he has a few that are higher than that.

The Meads

Here are some of the meads I tasted from Greg’s Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery. 

Pirates Blood – A very popular and cool-looking skull bottle holds Pirates Blood which is made from hot pepper and capsicum.  I can’t handle many spicy drinks but this one has just enough zippy bite and kick to it to be pleasant without going over the top. 

Strawberry — Jammy ripe fruit bursts from the glass with an earthy undertone of just-picked strawberries. The pure strawberry nose on this is amazing and conjures up warm summer days of sitting in your own strawberry patch.

Hops Mead Pineapple — One of my favorites, this mead has an alluring combination of hops and pineapple with interwoven notes of yeasty flavors and tropical fruit.  If you like hops or even the sumptuous smell of fresh-baked bread, you’ll love this.

Blueberry Pomegranate Sparkling –This mead boasts delicate yet full-flavored juicy blueberry flavors interlaced with the taut acidity of pomegranate. The fact that it is a sparkling wine made it all the more elegant.  This was another one of my favorites.

Meads

Mango Lime – This one was intriguing as I don’t love mango or lime however this combination works amazingly well.  The orange-tone tropical flavors of mango rise to a fresher level with the brisk acidity and tangy notes from the lime. 

Guava Lemon – My first thought on this mead was a soft sea breeze wafting out of the glass.  Tropical notes with fresh mineral tones from the lemon make this one refreshing and airy. 

Marionberry – Oregon is known for growing marionberries which are a blackberry cultivar developed by Oregon State University. Bramble blackberry courses through this lively mead, another of my favorites.

Chili – Dry pepper and dried chili leaves contribute fire while the honey softens the blow.  This mead leaves you feeling warm inside without being too spicy.

All of the meads shared the common thread of flavors that were incredibly fresh, vibrant, and singing with purity.  The flavors literally jumped out of the glass like bottled spring-time. 

On the wine side, I also liked the Bulls Blood which is a Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah blend barrel-aged for 1 year.  Honey softens the tannins, leaving the wine with red and violet floral notes on the back-end.  Honey can also lift a wine’s fruit flavors up in dry red wines.

Look for these fascinating drinks at Binny’s as well as online at the Wild Blossom Meadery website.  You can also go visit the Meadery yourself.  Wild Blossom offers wine/mead tasting, wine making classes, and beautiful private event space available to rent. Located at the edge of Dan Ryan Woods and Trail, it’s an easy ride right off the Dan Ryan Expressway.

Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery

Ever since a callow youth

I swore allegiance to the truth.

I recognized God meant I must

Make every effort to be just.

I’m only one, but in my mind

I knew the power of being kind.

For each of us ten-fold increases

When love prevails and we’re where peace is..

“Truth springs up from the earth, and righteousness smiles down from heaven“. Psalm 85:11

Second highest home sales compared to last
May’s record is not a disappointing outcome

It’s still relatively early in this cycle of increasing mortgage rates but so far closings have not really been impacted. There’s a bit more to this story below but, in the meantime, check out this graph and remember that last May set a blow out record for home sales. So when I tell you that this May’s sales were down by 1.8% that’s actually really impressive. It was up 14.0% from 2019 and it was the second highest sales in 16 years. This is one of those times when coming in second is nothing to frown about.

As usual the Illinois Association of Realtors will report slightly weaker sales than me in two weeks. They will come in with a 4.5% decline.

Chicago Home Contract Activity

However, the rest of the story is in the contract activity, which is starting to show signs of weakness and it’s a leading indicator of sales, right? May was the third month in a row of fairly significant and increasing declines in contracts written. You can see it clearly in the moving average line in the graph below. May contracts were down 18.6% from last year and only up slightly from the 2019 level. You would think that eventually this would show up in lower sales figures.

Pending Chicago Home Sales

What’s been keeping the lower contract figures from translating into lower sales is a backlog of pending sales which has been drawing down for about a year now. You can see that in the graph below – check out the moving average line. May’s pending home sales were down 1455 units from the previous year and 328 units from April. That’s pretty significant when  you consider that May sales were 3291 units. But there are limits to how much more we can go to the “well” for additional sales.

Distressed Chicago Home Sales

I’ve been talking about how foreclosure activity has been fairly muted since the expiration of the foreclosure moratorium so it’s no surprise that the percentage of distressed sales remains pretty low. However, it has been ticking up slightly lately. May came in with only 2.2% distressed sales compared to an even lower 1.1% last year. You can see the trend in the graph below. But I don’t think the percentage is going to go much higher, given the low level of foreclosure activity.

Chicago Home Inventory

The strength of the market can be measured by the supply/ demand imbalance as summed up in the months of supply. Both detached and attached homes keep hitting new lows. Detached inventory was the same as last year with a 1.9 month supply while attached inventory fell to 2.3 months vs. 2.8 last year. Just glancing at the graph you can see how 5 months was a more typical number once we got past the housing crash and that is generally seen as a more balanced market.

Chicago Home Sale Market Times

How long it takes to sell a home is also a great indicator of the strength of a market and again we’re seeing some positive signs. Attached market times are fairly low at 59 days on average – down from 81 days last year – but, as you can see in the graph, that’s not a record. On the other hand detached market times of 46 days is a record low and that is down from 50 days last year.

#RealEstate #ChicagoRealEstate

Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.

Books that spurred a love of reading.

Banning books. Burning books. Books pushing agendas. What about books that teach kids that it’s fun to read?

Growing up in the city, I always got such pleasure reaching for a favorite book. It was just as much fun as a game of fastpitch at the Field School schoolyard, or hoops at Leone Fieldhouse. And that passion outlived other time-passers. I don’t play baseball or basketball anymore, but I still love curling up with a good novel in the sunroom.

Plenty of the books I read in those formative years came from Scholastic Books. Our classroom teacher would distribute the company’s flyer to our classroom. I would pore over each book description, trying to make the best choice for the 3 or 4 books I would convince my parents to order for me. And I felt darn proud when the teacher told the class that I could choose anything I wanted, even though some books were a year or two above our grade level.

My penchant for mystery stories came early. I remember being in 2nd or 3rd grade hunting for clues in The Secret of Black Rock, The Dugout Canoe Mystery, and Emil and the Detectives. Those were but precursors to my discovery of Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Sherlock Holmes. Highpockets and other books by the prolific author John R Tunis were my passageways to sports fiction.

There were kid-geared biographies, too. After one School Parent’s Night Book Fair, my folks surprised me with a biography of Helen Keller. It was paired with a Thomas Edison biography containing the story, probably apocryphal, of the young inventor being pulled onto a train by his ears.

When I was eight my Swiss uncle gave me the English translation of the German children’s book Lottie and Lisa by Erich Kästner. While the title may not seem familiar to you, I assure you that you crushed on either Hayley Mills or Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, movies based on that Kastner story.

Not every book had a story to tell. I memorized volumes filled with jokes, riddles, and whimsical verses. The first poem I could ever recite?

The Thunder God went for a ride,
Upon his favorite filly.
“I’m Thor,” he cried.
The horse replied,
“You forgot your thaddle, thilly.”

Now ask me how much of The Wasteland from my college English Lit of the 20th Century course I can remember…

Yes, I understand that early reading needs to be inclusive and non-stereotypical. But please, please, please let it be fun. What is more effective than instilling the joy of reading to produce a loving, caring, open-minded person and citizen?

Are you a music or radio fan? Check out our previous post here.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!
___

———————————–

The following was first published last year, but, with the Jan 6 hearings coming up on prime time, a revisit seems in order:

From John: You still blame everything bad on trump just like he blamed everything bad on Obama

It’s idiotic to think we need another investigation of the capital (sic) . …. Just another waste of time and money those idiots were just that idiots there is no conspiracy and all of those who think having the capital fenced off are Aldo (sic) idiots ….. the fences and troops if used need to be at the borders

It’s all working great and anything including all the mass shootings that has happened since January …… except the creation of the vaccines…. Is now Joe’s problem

We don’t need trumps tax returns I want to see how so many Public servants became multi millionaires while in office

You just seem to hate anyone and everyone who disagrees with you
So sorry you have become so sour

I still love you but just worry that your hatred is destroying the very kind likeable man I have known.

Let’s get one thing straight: I was never all that likeable. In fact, I look back at every moment spent trying to be likeable as a complete waste of time and effort.

I am not however, consumed with hatred. I am consumed with disappointment with the people who have traded their critical thinking for recycled Fox babble.

I am consumed with fear for the future of an America where millions of voters live in an alternate universe and believe everything that comes out of a horse’s ass.

I don’t blame everything bad on Trump, but there is a LOT for which he is responsible because he is a VERY bad man.

For whatever I blame Trump, it is in no way, shape or form analogous to a president blaming everything bad on his predecessor and all of his political opponents, people he sees as enemies.

Donnie’s modus operandi throughout his life has been to scapegoat anyone and everyone at whom he could point a finger and take credit for things beyond his control.

Donnie takes credit for making Juneteenth famous, simply because he deliberately scheduled a rally – a rally comprised of White supremacists and other assorted racists – on June 19, 2020. A rally he rescheduled to the following day because of the backlash.

Anytime Donnie learns something that everyone else already knows, he takes credit for discovering it and/or making it famous.

John calls me idiotic because I think the January 6, 2021 attack on our nation’s Capitol deserves scrutiny. I think it’s idiotic that he doesn’t.

Did we need to have an impeachment over a blowjob? Did we need to have 9 or 10 investigations into an attack on an obscure outpost in a place most Americans couldn’t point to on a map; investigations that culminated in the appearance of the subject of those investigations respecting a summons from Congress and sitting for ELEVEN grueling hours of questioning?

Investigations that were greater in scope, depth and duration than Congress’s investigation into the coordinated attacks on 9/11 that killed 3,000 people, did billions of dollars of property damage, disrupted commerce and our economy and damaged the lives of thousands.

Very mysterious how Republicans decide what they want to investigate.

What if John’s wife was brutally gang raped? Would he dismiss that and say, Let’s move on, those idiots were just idiots?

As horrific as that hypothetical crime against John’s wife may be, its significance is miniscule compared to the scale of the attack on the Capitol, on elected officials, the Constitution, congressional procedure and the American people.

Those idiots at the Capitol were not just idiots. They were well organized, well funded and more disturbingly, well informed.

It was not some random event. It was planned, nurtured and set in place, like a bomb waiting to be detonated, with the President of the United States holding the detonator.

Guns were confiscated along with other makeshift weapons such as bats, pipes, spears and flag poles. Pipe bombs were found.

Uniformed men with helmets, communication devices and bullet proof vests moved through the crowd to breach the Capitol.

COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THE INSURRECTIONISTS AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS HAS BEEN DISCOVERED, BOTH BEFORE AND DURING THE ATTACK.

140 police officers were injured in that attack, some seriously, some permanently. One died and at least two committed suicide in the following weeks.

What’s idiotic is to think that it was just a bunch of random idiots coming together for a tour of the Capitol.

We should see Trump’s tax returns, just as we should see the tax returns of anyone running for president or anyone involved in an organized, criminal enterprise.

Donnie checks both boxes.

Every American deserves that, even if they don’t know it. Would it have been OK if Barack Obama refused to release his tax returns or ran a sham university, defrauding students out of millions of dollars?

John seems to miss the irony (hypocrisy) of him telling me that I hate anyone and everyone who disagrees with me while telling me that I am no longer likeable because of what I say.

It’s like Republicans ousting Lynn Cheney from her leadership position for simply telling the truth, for saying what she saw with her own eyes and knows to be true and then accusing Democrats of something they (Republicans) call cancel culture.

Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, spread lies about a stolen election and incited a riot, insurrection or whatever you want to call it to disrupt Congress from fulfilling its pro forma, constitutional responsibilities.

It is idiotic to think otherwise.

John makes a good point about public servants getting rich and it’s imperative to get private and dark money out of politics and our government, not that it will ever happen.

Might as well add term limits for senators and congressmen to that wish list.

John’s right, we should know how Jared and Ivanka made $600 MILLION while working at the White House.

As Glenn Kirschner said, Trump’s presidency was an unabated crime wave.

This isn’t about politics or policies because Donnie has neither. Nor does he have any serious religious commitment. He only uses those issues, which are malleable to stoke his base.

Do I blame things on Donnie? Absolutely.

Donnie did some of the worst things we’ve ever seen anyone do, both before and during his presidency. He is the most corrupt man ever to inhabit the White House.

Trump’s only agenda was to enrich himself, his family and his allies, to aggrandize himself and to do the bidding of Vladimir Putin, a sworn enemy of the United States of America.

Dismissing Donnie as an asshole is like saying that John Wayne Gacy had a fondness for young men.

If John had described Donnie as a lowlife, scumbag piece of crap, he would still have been too generous, but he would have been on the right track.

Anyone who took the time to read the Mueller Report – even just 50 pages of it – would understand that everyone in the Trump (2016) campaign was up to their eyeballs in Russian operatives and they all lied about it.

Trump was NOT, as lying liar Bill Barr said, exonerated by the report. Barr’s 3-1/2 page summary of a 400-page report that he hadn’t read is complete fiction.

Trump used taxpayer funded military aid as a weapon to get the president of Ukraine to say that they were investigating Joe Biden, which was also fiction.

Trump’s phone conversations and all the evidence proved it. Instead of convicting him, as they should have, Republicans chose to back Trump’s lies, just as they are backing them now.

It is idiotic not to see this for the threat to our democracy that it so blatantly is.

Donnie incited the attack on the Capitol. He stirred them up for weeks with his lies and fraudulent claims.

Watch and listen to his speech on January 6, riling up the crowd, telling them to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, that he would lead them, something any reasonable person would have known that a coward like him would never do.

It happened, I saw it with my own eyes.

Donnie and 147 congressmen tried to overturn the election and he’s still excoriating Mike Pence for simply executing his duties as vice president, knowing that his words very nearly got Pence lynched.

It’s idiotic to think that Donnie did anything but lie about, cover up and minimize COVID-19 and look for scapegoats instead of solutions.

600,000 are dead and lot of them would still be alive if Donald J. Trump had acted like a president instead of a petty, narcissistic cult leader.

Encouraging Americans to wear masks would have limited the spread of the disease. What was the point of turning that into a political football?

Vaccinations save lives and the Trumps got them. Why pretend they didn’t? Even Sean Hannity, TucKKKer Carlson and Laura Ingraham got vaccinated.

Donnie didn’t create any vaccines, nor does he understand how they work. The first vaccine to the market and the most effective – Pfizer – was created in conjunction with a German research company – BioNTech – and they were not a part of the Warp Speed thing, nor did they take any taxpayer money to do it.

As for mass shootings, we’ve been experiencing them on an almost daily basis that predates even Trump. If you’re looking to hang blame for that, Moscow Mitch McConnell has as much blood on his hands as anyone outside the NRA.

I still love you too, John, but your comments are disappointingly regurgitated Fox “News.”

Fox’s own lawyers have said in sworn court filings that anyone who believes a word of what Sean Hannity or TucKKKer Carlson says is a fool.

Carlson’s lawyers beat a defamation suit by saying, in court briefs that, No reasonable person would believe him, a defense now proffered by one of Trump’s whacko attorneys, Sidney Powell.

No John, I don’t blame everything bad on Trump, but everything Trump did was bad.

Don’t you ever wonder though, why he has such strong support among hate groups, including those who would kill me, the guy you love, just because I’m Jewish?

Subscribe to the Chicago Board of Tirade
* You will never get SPAM
* Your email address will never be sold or given away
* You will only receive emails on days I post
* You can unsubscribe at any time
* Just type your email address in the box below and click the “Create Subscription” button

* Email me anytime: [email protected] OR [email protected]