Beverage World - March 15, 2005

Just like honey Mead emerges from the Dark Ages.

The word "mead" generally evokes images of Chaucer, Beowulf and the friendly neighborhood Renaissance Fair, but the rapidly increasing number of mead makers in the US and abroad are hoping to make it more mainstream than medieval.

"We always refer to it as the oldest beverage no one's ever heard of," says David Myers, "chairman of the mead" at Boulder, CO, USA-based Redstone Meadery.

Slowly but surely that's been changing, thanks to the efforts of Redstone, which founded the International Mead Association (IMA), also based in Boulder.

According to the association, to be defined as mead, the product must be fermented from at least 51 percent honey. After that mead makers can add fruits, herbs and spices either during fermentation or after.

IMA estimates there are at least 200 meaderies worldwide and approximately 60 in the United States. IMA expects to get more concrete numbers after it completes its first formal meadery survey.

"At least 50 percent of those have opened in the past five to seven years," believes Julia Herz, a spokesperson for the association.

Why the relatively sudden interest? Mostly, she says, meaderies have the beverage drinking public to thank. "Right now this is a very experimental time for consumers," she explains. "They're willing to taste hard cider, sake is growing right now, as are all of the wine varietals. All of that shows that there's a much more progressive palate out there where people are much more open-minded than they were before the mid-80s."

There are, of course, those she feels aren't quite as open-minded as she'd like.

"The demographic for mead drinkers is everyone but wine snobs," she bluntly notes. "And those may be fighting words - we respect people who are well-schooled in grape wine - but we want people who are open to new things."

Aficionados of craft brews, imports, hard cider and sake tend to be the easiest converts, she suggests.

The organization sponsors the annual International Mead Festival in Boulder (though the inaugural event was in Chicago), which has introduced a new crop of consumers to the diverse product lines since 2002. Last year more than 700 consumers had the chance to sample more than 80 commercially available meads.

Those included a number of Redstone products, such as its Nectar and Mountain Honey Wine line. The 8-percent ABV Nectars, which include Blackberry Nectar and the apricot-infused Sunshine Nectar, are characterized by their fruitiness and are more cider and beer-like in their approach. The 12-percent ABV Mountain Honey Wines, on the other hand, tend to be a bit more wine-like. Redstone also markets a Reserve line, which range between 14 and 16 percent ABV and are most closely akin to ports and sherries. "The great thing about mead is that it can be a wonderfully diverse product," Myers raves. "Just like wine is a huge category, mead is a very large category, in terms of variety. We try to reflect that in everything we make."

Pomegranate is the fruit of choice for Fresno, CA, USA-based Full Circle Brewing Company. The brewer markets Pomegranate Mead, as well as a traditional mead offering and Orange Blossom Special, under the Los Californios label.

Full Circle, according to IMA's preliminary estimates, is one of about 30 craft brewers or wineries in the US that also produce mead. Like many in the commercial craft brewing business, mead making has grown out of a home-based hobby.

"I think the home brewing community in general has been helpful in making [mead] more popular," offers Full Circle's owner and business manager, Don Anderson. "People who are interested in making beer are more interested in making different, exotic things and they eventually stumble on to meads."

The Desi Dew Meadery (Rougemont, NC, USA) owes its start to a combination of home brewing and the toils of the computer software industry. "In my earlier life, I was a software developer and one of the other developers was a home brewer," recalls Bill Bailey, president and owner of Desi Dew. "He had made some mead and a remarkably good sparkling mead, so I gave it a try. The combination of getting really burned out on software and looking for something that I thought would be up-and-coming made me decide to try it commercially."

Bailey's products include Royal Table Sweet Mead (a traditional offering), Royal Table Dry Mead, Desi's Wildflower Sparkling Mead, Desi's Raspberry Sparkling Mead and Jack's Blackberry Mead (named for the local beekeeper who supplies the honey). The company recently launched Tupelo Jubilee, which uses the popular honey of the same name. "[Tupelo honey] has a very unique flavor; I can't explain it," Bailey says.

Saint-Benoit, Quebec, Canada-based Intermiel is all about the honey. In addition to making and selling about 20,000 gallons of eight different varieties of mead each year (which actually is on the high side among North American meaderies), it also operates one of the largest honey-producing bee farms in all of Quebec. Its apiary activities began about 30 years ago, about 15 years before it started producing mead. Mead awareness in that region is somewhat ahead of that in the US, but that's a fairly recent phenomenon.

"Much has changed in 30 years," observes Andre Abi Raad, production engineer and oenologue at Intermiel. "Thirty years ago, if you talked to 10 people in Quebec, there were nine who didn't know mead and one who did. Now, it's almost the inverse. About 75 percent of the people know about mead now or have tasted it somewhere."

Intermiel meads are available in 400 stores operated by the province's alcohol control board and the company is expanding into the European, US and Asian markets.

However, despite such successes, mead's distribution remains a mostly DIY affair.

Desi Dew's Bailey has brought retailers on board by going store to store and exhibiting at wine shows. The meadery also has a Web site and direct ships to the states that allow it. "I do my own marketing, distribution, shipping and sales," Bailey notes.

Last year, Redstone Meadery managed to hook up with Austin, Texas USA-based Manneken Brussel Imports, which has helped get its products in nine states outside its Colorado base: California, Oregon, Alaska, Arizona, Wyoming, Texas, North Carolina, Michigan and Florida. Redstone is only one of two US-based companies represented by Manneken Brussel, which markets Chimay throughout the Western US and other Belgian lines across the entire country. "Working with [Manneken Brussel] has allowed us to have better access to distributors," says Redstone's Myers. "And we're very proud to get the chance to partner around with such a fine product as Chimay."

And then, of course, there are the aforementioned Renaissance Fairs, which can be a mixed blessing for meaderies. On one hand they can introduce new generations of curious consumers to the classic beverage. On the other hand they could take such a narrow approach to the product that consumers might not be able to experience its versatility. "Renaissance Fairs need to think of mead as a diverse beverage," suggests IMA's Herz. "If you go to the fairs, there are usually four or five beers available for purchase, but there is only one mead, the one they sell through an exclusivity agreement with a single meadery. That's not the way to approach it. People want selection, just like they want selection of beers and the Renaissance Fairs could do a better job of catapulting mead into mainstream consciousness."

IMA's next effort to expand mead consciousness will be in February 2006 at the Fourth Annual International Mead Festival in Boulder, CO, US. For more info, visit www.meadfest.com.

-Jeff Cioletti

www.desidew.com * www.fullcirclebrewing.com
www.intermiel.com * www.meadfest.com
www.redstonemeadery.com