Wintergreen finish?

[ForsbergFotos]

hopefully I don't get attacked too much, but this is in reference to a commercial mead.

I've opened a bottle of sweet mead from White Winter Winery and it has this odd mint/wintergreen finish to it. Tasting notes from their website and an outside source have no mention of it, but it is very much there.

Is there anything in the fermentation/bottling process that may have went wrong to produce such an odd flavor? Its not horrible, but definitely not what I expected when buying this bottle. I've tried it chilled and room temp, maybe I'll warm some up tomorrow and see if it changes. Mid summer this might be refreshing, but not in the dead of winter

 

[BILTIT]

I am curious about this, i have an applejack that has been conditioning for about a month and a half and has taken on this same finish taste. It didnt have it before.

 

[thm57]

I had that on a spiced mead I made last year, it wasn't there for the first 4 months, it was there at 6, then at a year it had disappeared. no clue what did it, but I can remember having the same flavour to a lesser extent on other meads I used spices on.

 

[bmwr75]

I've heard a professional mead maker, forget which one, say that a certain yeast resulted in a minty overtone in meads. I am woefully short on details now due to fuzzy memory though.

 

[ForsbergFotos]

The response from the producer was that basswood honey usually has a hint of wintergreen flavor and then asked me if it was one of their reserves or just the regular annual release. It is just the regular old sweet mead. After sampling a little each day the wintergreen had pretty much disappeared on the 4th day, so I proceeded to finish off the bottle. It was by no means a sweet mead and at best an off-dry. By the time I thought about taking a SG reading the last glass was already poured, oh well.
It's made in Wisconsin so I'll have to see about finding another bottle somewhere else and trying it again asit should hopefully not bee too hard to locate.