As leaves take on autumn colours and shadows lengthen, Festina Lente Estate Winery releases new flavours of mead that pair beautifully with fall foods. Now is the time to stock up from the Langley tasting room or online with selections such as Pumpkin, Cranberry, and Winter Spiced.
Imagine your Thanksgiving holiday ham, beef roast, butternut squash or buttery mashed potatoes served with Pumpkin Mead, or roast turkey with Cranberry Mead. Yes, please! How about a light festive spritzer anchored by cranberry. On those cooler evenings, sit by the fire with a Winter Spiced Mead. Or perhaps pair it as an alternative to Chai with your East Indian feast.
“Make Haste Slowly”
Bill and Teresa Townsley named their five-acre hobby farm estate winery Festina Lente, which means make haste slowly.
It is appropriate for their bee to bottle on the farm approach. Building a life as beekeepers and winemakers, they explored the historic path of mead or honey wines. Using modern winemaking processes, they discovered mead is not as sweet as you might think and Festina Lente’s some 35 different varieties of mead are dry, off-dry, and semi-sweet. Along the way, they came to realize sugar was not in the diet of ancient folks as it is in modern cultures.
Their work, while physically demanding caring for the bees, growing what they can on their farm and sourcing from nearby farms, has been rewarding. Festina Lente has expanded five times in its eight years of business and its mead has captured the admiration of notable wine critics such as Anthony Gismondi and Bob Bell
(Wines of Canada).
Festivals and Gift Giving
Festina Lente recently celebrated their successes at the highly successful Australian Cultural Festival, a first for Metro Vancouver. It showcased Aussie food, music, art, and cultural education. With over 1,400 in attendance, they plan on returning next year. But first, you’ll find them at Cornucopia, Whistler’s Celebration of Food and Drink and Vancouver’s Christmas Glow Festival in Langley in November.
As the season of giving approaches, keep in mind Festina Lente is well known for its affordable and consumable gift baskets, perfect for gift giving. Creative packages such as Date Night In include wine and snacks. There’s also Wine and Charcuterie, perfect for friends and colleagues. And if you can’t drink the wine right away, it’s good to know that among its many benefits, mead lasts longer. You can age a bottle for at least 50 years and when you do open it, it remains good for about three weeks.
Wine Club
To confirm your access to small-batch limited edition honey wines of exceptional quality, consider the Wine Club at Festina Lente. See festinalente.ca/wine-club for all the benefits of membership.