Superstition - Amante

Amante by Superstition Meadery is their mead Safeword aged on coffee, cocoa nibs, cinnamon and chiles.  It is a yearly release available online and in their tap room for $48 for a 750mL bottle.  It is 13% Alcohol by volume.  

Amante is a Gold Medal winner at the 2016 Mazer Cup International.

For background, the base mead is Safeword, Safeword is Superstition's bourbon barrel aged mead with Belgian Dark Candi syrup.  So Amante cranks Safeword up to eleven by adding coffee, cocoa, cinnamon, and chile to the mix.

The easiest way to describe this mead to anyone familiar with craft beer is: Hunahpu.  This is the mead version of Cigar City Brewing's beautiful cinnamon, cocoa, and chile imperial stout, Hunahpu.  

This mead pours a very rich, dark ruby. It's dark and near opaque but still has beautiful clarity.  
The nose is this bouquet of aromas.  You get hit with honey sweetness, candy, coffee, cinnamon, bakers chocolate, rum soak dates.  It's just this explosion of richness to it.  Just on the nose and appearance you know this will be a decadant drink,

The taste is wow.  Much like the Coffee Marion, Amante takes a tasty base mead and elevates it to another level.  All the flavors are there, the coffee, the honey, the bourbon, the chile, the cinnamon. 
 However it is so well balances that none of the flavors overpower.  They all are beautifully balanced to create this extremely rich, dark, flavorful drink.  It's damn near like drinking a bourbon barrel aged imperial stout.  So if you're a fan of that style, this is the mead for you.  
This is a very lovely mead and worth seeking out if you are a fan of the flavors described above

Misbeehavin' - Pineapple & Chile

 

Pineapple & Chile is, as you can guess, a mead made with pineapples and chiles by Misbeehavin' Meads, specifically Chiles de Arbol.  Pineapple & Chile was released at their meadery in 750mL bottles for $28 around late July 2016.  It is 12.5% ABV.
This is an interestingly beautiful mead that combines fruit and spices.  Do you call it a capsimel? a melomel?  Who knows, and who cares.  When a mead has such beautifully melded flavors categorization is irrelevant.

The color on this mead is a nearly crystal yellow.  There's a very subtle layer of sediment on the bottom that if the bottle is agitated will create a very subtle haze.  Not a distracting feature by any means.

The aroma is very tropical.  I immediately get thoughts of vacations in Mexico.  There's a wonderful crisp pineapple smell, like a tropical drink.  But at the end there's a bit of heat tingle in the nose, and you can get a little bit of spicy fresh vegetable pepper.
Easiest way to describe the taste is honey drenched pineapples up front with some spicy on the back end.  At first you taste this juicy ripe pineapple that's been drizzled in honey.  Then after you swallow the heat creeps up.  I'm a big fan of spicy heat, so I thought the heat on this mead was very enjoyable.  However I will warn if you're not a fan of spicy things this might be a bit over powering.  Another way to describe Pineapple & Chile is that it's almost reminiscent of a grilled pineapple minus the smoke.  Like a tropical dessert.

Overall I loved this mead.  It is probably the best representation of a capsimel I've tasted to this point.  The balance of sweetness and heat are in perfect harmony and the depth of this mead is really impressive.  It's everything I look for in a mead.  If I had to be overly critical of it I would say the presented format is not ideal.  A 750mL of a spicy capsimel, even with the fruit, is a bit much.  A 375mL format, probably shared between a friend or two, is an ideal serving size for this mead.  However $28 for 750mL of a mead this good is a steal of a deal any way you package it.