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Honey Gardens’ organic fruit meads (Melomels) are now available in select stores around Vermont.
The Blueberry Mead is made with wild Maine organic blueberries from our friend Theresa Gaffney in Stockton Springs, Maine. It is more like red wine and comes in a regular Bordeaux-style wine bottle. This mead pairs well with grilled chicken and vegetables.
The Black Currant mead is actually pink! (It starts out dark purple but the color changes in the bulk tank). The organic currants come from our friends the Noels on the Isle d’Orleans near Quebec City in Canada. This is the best pink wine you’ll ever have. Try this mead as an aperitif.
Now Available in Vermont at these locations
Other Places? – As we produce more mead we hope to expand our distribution radius in Vermont. If you are a store or restaurant interested in the mead please call us at (802) 877-6766. |
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Honey Gardens Meadery Has Legs
A few years ago we had the idea of turning our honey into mead (honey wine). Mead can be a transcendent beverage, combining the magic of honey with the mystery of fermentation. Honey Gardens was already making the best raw honey around, so the base for our mead was in place.
Mead is the oldest fermented beverage known to humankind. The early hunter gatherers would often put honey from wild bees into their canteens to bring back to their camps. If the honey mixed with water, then wild yeasts and bacteria in the honey would have had a good environment to begin fermentation. After a few weeks an alcoholic beverage would have been created. Since the process was so easy the use of honey as a fermentable became ubiquitous, and every early culture developed mead recipes. Mead continued to thrive for centuries, especially in Northern climates where it was hard to grow grapes. But as wine and beer became cheaper to make and trade between distant countries became commonplace, the popularity of mead declined.
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These days mead is experiencing a renaissance, thanks in part to homebrewers, meaderies on the West coast and the reemergence of local beekeeping. Here in Vermont it’s pretty hard to grow wine grapes, almost impossible to grow barley for beer, but the bees thrive. So it makes sense that honey deserves reconsideration as a fermentable. And whereas growing grapes and barley requires large tracts of land, beekeeping requires almost none and the work of the bees is complimentary to the surrounding flora. Honey is a holistic agricultural project and mead is honey kicked up a notch.
When our commitment to start making mead was finalized, we brought in Doug Erb, an experienced home mead maker, to start designing recipes. Doug brought his equipment down to the honey house and got to work, taking careful notes along the way. He also started the process of our government application, not easy stuff. After some excellent trial batches made by Doug and Tim, head bee-keeper and fellow mead maker, the enthusiasm for the project was high.
A few years had passed since we had the first vision of Honey Gardens meadery, and the time had come to actually assemble the facility. The decision was made to recruit someone who had fermentation experience on a larger scale. In late May of this year I came in for an interview. Even though my experience was with beer, my vision for how a meadery would operate inspired Honey Gardens to hire me.
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The next day I came in and made some small scale batches with Doug. Doug passed on to me his mead making notes, books, and some of his equipment. He also passed on to me the government application, which still needed some work. I spent the next few months making trial batches, applying for permits, talking to other mead makers, and ordering equipment.
During that time, we talked to Ken Albert about sharing his winery space at Shelburne Vineyard. Ken was extremely supportive and curious about our project. Working with Ken has been an invaluable part of this new venture. He has shared his space, experience, and equipment, and this would not have been possible without his generosity.
Finally, our permit in hand, we had our first brew day earlier this month. Those few days were very stressful for me, but everything went pretty much as planned. My mentor, John Wolfenberger of Franconia Notch Brewery, came over to help me build a chiller and get all the equipment working together. On the actual brew day, our friend Bob Stahl, an engineer from Rhino Foods, came over to help too. I would not have been able to do the job without them there.
The mead is in the tank and fermenting slowly. The one we made that day was an 8% sparkling mead called “Melissa,” after the mythological Greek queen bee goddess. Sometime in November it will go into bottles, and then, after a few weeks conditioning, will be available around Vermont.
Ask for Mead!
the vision of Honey Gardens Apiaries includes
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