There's little point in quoting "alcohol potential", as that's rather meaningless. Here, and many other forums, it's mainly "gravity" readings/measurements (expressed to 3 decimal places), or maybe a "brix" measurement, as that's popular in the US and is easily converted to gravity measurements.
Champagne yeast is not really good to use, as you'll find that it does seem to blow a lot of the flavour and aroma elements straight out the airlock and the resultant mead can take a long time to recover, if ever.
You end up with a mead that's likely to be "alcohol hot" and when that flavour fades, unremarkable tasting mead that's not really very distinctive.
Most wine yeasts are good for at least 14%. D47 is popular, but really needs to be fermented in the mid 60's F, otherwise you can get a lot of fusels..... 71B is good and produces meads that can be drinkable a little quicker than might otherwise be the case. K1V is also good, has a higher alcohol tolerance and a very wide temperature range. Yes, meads can taste a little "rough" when young but it seems to age beautifully.
I'm also a fan of D21 (much harder to get in home brew sized packs though).
So, also, to get the maximum out of the strawberries, I'd suggest that you ferment the mead without the fruit to start with, then add the fruit into secondary, or even tertiary. Again, the very vigorous first part of the ferment can easily reduce the fruit flavour/aroma part, which is usually why a lot of people will split the fruit, or put it in secondary (or tertiary), because it seems to preserve more of the fruit flavour and can also help toward making the mead drinkable earlier.
As for your initial question about spices, well I'd say that the spices should match the fruit i.e. ones that have a proven link like apple and cinnamon, etc etc. Strawberries ? well if you consult anyone with a little "cheffy" type knowledge they seem to go well with, of all things, black pepper. Though I like them (well as a smoothie) with a little vanilla. Either way, it's worth heeding Joe Mattioli's advice in the "JAO" recipe about not over doing the spices, when he alludes to cloves. It's very easy to use too much and make a batch undrinkable, so with the spices, it really does seem that "less is more".
regards
fatbloke