Blackberry Black Mead Sorbet Floats

We are lucky to have a fairly substantial supply of homemade wines and meads stacked up at our house. So, when I wanted to make a wine infused sorbet with some of the berries from my Driscolls haul, I had quite a selection to choose from. I finally settled on black mead, which is technically a black currant melomel, a fruited honey wine. If you don't make your own, you can find these fairly easily at most wine shops these days, as meads have become more popular of late.

A word of warning about making sorbet with wine: it will take longer to process in your ice cream maker. In this case, it took me almost an hour to get this to the correct consistency, but it is worth the wait. It made a large batch, so I might cut back on the wine next time...or not!

I decided to serve this as a float because the sorbet is quite sweet, and the sparkling lemonade accented the flavor of the blackberries perfectly.


Blackberry Black Mead Sorbet
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup water
2 1/2 cups black mead (you can use any semi sweet red wine here, as a substitution)
1 teaspoon almond extract
Zest and juice of 1 lime
1 cup (2 six ounce containers) fresh Driscoll's blackberries
Sparkling lemonade
In a saucepan, combine sugar, honey and water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer until mixture turns golden, then add wine, extract, zest and lime juice. Stir until thoroughly combined, and add blackberries. Continue to simmer for 15 minutes, and mash the berries with the back of a spoon. Remove from heat, and press the mixture through a sieve to get as much juice out as possible. Refrigerate until chilled, then process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturers instructions. Place sorbet in freezer until set. Serve with sparkling lemonade, or your favorite citrus soda.