The writer made some interesting points but I was surprised to read his comments on food pairings. My sisters and I own Hill Top Berry Farm and Winery in Virginia. We have made a popular niche for ourselves by making specialty wines which we call "True to the Fruit" wines and historical honey meads. I'm the wine/mead maker and have an interest in resurecting alcoholic drinks from the distant past. We make mead in many styles and they are very popular. We make the traditional "viking style" mead as well as cysers, melomels, pyments and metheglin. We routinly pair these with food in our tasting room and at dinners here. We pair our traditonal mead with smokey meats and cheeses as well as food off the grill. St. Finian, a 5th century Irish monk, paired salmon and mead together one day a week after eating only bread and water the other six days. Salmon steaks off the grill pair wonderfully with our mead and cyser. Cyser and BBQ is a great pairing. Our strawberry melomel pairs with foods from smoked almonds to country ham. Our wild persimmon melomel, a gold medal winner this year at the International Mead Festival Competition in Boulder, Colorado, pairs with smoked foods but also banana nut bread. Our customers enjoy our pairings and tell us about their own. For more information on pairings, visit the wine list description on our website @ www.hilltopberrywine.com