Savannah Bee Company opened its doors at 123 N. Main St. with little fanfare last fall and just as quietly closed its doors in January.
Following a hiatus and a store
renovation, the popular Savannah-based company is reopening its doors on
March 27 with a full stock of honey and health-and-beauty products,
along with a new “honey cafe” concept.
Company founder Ted Dennerd said the new Greenville spot,
which is the 15th Savannah Bee Company location, was designed to be one
of the most expansive storefronts the company has to offer.
“It’ll be only one of three stores we
have that has the honey cafe concept in it,” Dennerd said. “We can serve
things like chocolate honey lattes, hot biscuits with honeycomb on it,
and all kinds of stuff.”
That also includes a bar serving mead
(sometimes called honey wine), an alcoholic beverage created by
fermenting honey, which holds the historical honor by being the earliest
known alcoholic beverage in human history. Fun fact: When you see
paintings of Vikings glugging from horn-shaped cups at their feasts,
they were drinking mead.
Ted Dennerd, founder, Savannah Bee Company. Photos provided by Savannah Bee Company
Beyond offering Viking-friendly
beverages, Dennerd also hopes the store can serve as an educational
opportunity for those who typically only consume honey from store-brand
teddy bear bottles. Such mass-produced honey is highly heated and highly
filtered, with countless different types of honey blended together, the
goal being not to highlight a particular flavor but rather to get the
honey to look a certain color — that familiar gold.
“That doesn’t mean it’s bad,” Dennerd
said, “but contrast that with a beekeeper taking great pride and care in
maintaining his or her hives and assuring the honey that is produced is
all from, say, just the blossoms of an orange tree, or a tupelo tree.
There is a lot of art and science in it, and you can really taste the
difference.”
It’s a difference as significant as
comparing a Bud Lite to a South Carolina craft beer, or a box of Franzia
to a bottle of Italian Chianti.
“Different colour, different taste, and even the composition of sugars will be different,” Dennerd said.
His passion for honey started early, when
he was just 13 years old and an elderly gentleman by the name of Roy
Hightower schooled him in the age-old tradition of beekeeping.
“I remember him holding up a frame of honey to the sun, and it looked like stained glass,” Dennerd said. “I was enthralled.”
As bees now face habitat loss and deadly
parasitic mites that have spread across the globe, Dennerd hopes he can
do his part to enthrall the youth of today to continue the tradition and
be good stewards of one of the most vital components of our ecosystem.
“Once you learn to love the bees, you
can’t help it,” he said. “You just need to be properly introduced to
them, and once you are, it’s hard not to love them.”
The
last time I drank mead was 7 April 1978. It was my 18th birthday and
—unforgettably — it was snowing heavily. My chum Mark had bought me a
bottle of Lindisfarne Mead which I knocked back on top of several
Tequila Sunrises, a bottle of Black Tower and a few Brandy Alexanders.
This
toxic mix took its toll and I was violently sick during an all-comers’
snowball fight the length of the Fulham Road, before getting arrested
for being drunk and disorderly outside the Café des Artistes at 3 a.m.
I
only mention this because my younger son, Ludo, is now 18 and has
developed a serious mead habit. But where mead in my day was limited to
the aforementioned Lindisfarne — beloved of National Trust shops and
historical re-enactors — today it is deeply trendy, thanks to dozens of
new producers, modern packaging and a range of alcohol levels and
flavours.
Credit: Alamy
Ludo
favours Gosnells hopped sparkling mead in cans, which he likens to a
fragrant and fruity IPA. I joined him in a session and he was right. It
smelled of hops but also of passion fruit, guava, elderflower and even
Earl Grey tea. At only 4 per cent vol, it was deliciously refreshing and
there at the finish was a delectable taste of honey.
And
honey is what it’s all about. Mead has some claim to be the most
ancient of all alcoholic drinks, with evidence it was first made in
China in around 7000 bc. The recipe is simply honey, water and yeast.
Honey on its own won’t ferment (too viscous) but add water and a little
yeast and it will.
Mead
can be sparkling or still, and sweet, medium or dry; and can range from
0.5 per cent vol to around 12 per cent. And it can be flavoured —
Gosnells, for example, makes a hibiscus sparkling mead. It’s juicy and
tart and, again, nicely refreshing, although a little too like flavoured
cider perhaps.
As
for Lindisfarne, it’s really a pyment rather than a mead, including as
it does fermented grape juice and a fortifying spirit. Rod Marsh, who
runs the National Collection of Cider and Perry at Middle Farm, near
Firle in East Sussex, tells me that if mead is adulterated with apples
it’s a cyser, that if other fruits are added it’s a melomel, and that if
it’s spiced it’s a metheglin.
There
are probably more than a hundred barrels of fine artisanal cider and
perry open at any one time in Middle Farm’s atmospheric Darling Buds of May-like
barn, and around 250 different bottles on the shelves. It was ever
thus. What has changed, though, is that where Rod once stocked three or
four meads, today there are almost 100 in bottle and 20 on draught. He
has to fight the punters off.
Just
as a fine wine speaks of its terroir, so a fine mead speaks of the
flora that lies within easy reach of the hive. The better the honey, the
better the mead, and the more honey, the stronger.
Gosnells
is one of the largest producers and one of the pioneers of the mead
revolution and, thanks to my son, I’ve developed quite a taste for it.
But then I’ve also recently lapped up Baldur’s Mead from Lancashire,
Ninemaidens Mead from Cornwall and Rookery Craft Mead from Scotland.
Enjoy them as you would wine: on their own or with food. Tequila Sunrises optional.
When making award-winning meads at her farm in Grovedale, Alta., Kristeva Dowling likes to talk to the yeast.
Dowling isn’t forthcoming about what she discusses with the miracle fungus, but it must be working. After launching Stolen Harvest Meadery in early 2020 she pulled down three gold medals at last November’s
World Mead Challenge in Chicago, a remarkable accomplishment for someone
who only started experimenting with the alcoholic beverage on Christmas
Day of 2017. Maybe a few encouraging words cooed during the
fermentation process isn’t such a wacky idea?
“Ben Staley at Restaurant Yarrow in Edmonton told me
that there’s a particular winemaker in Spain who takes his mandolin out
to the grape fields and sings to them,” says Dowling, who owns and
operates Stolen Harvest with help from her husband, Eric Erme, in the
tiny hamlet of Grovedale, just south of Grande Prairie. “He does it so
that the grapes know where they’re from. I said to Ben that I need to
meet that man.”
Keeping bees
It was a desire to get into
beekeeping in 2015 that kicked off the run of events that led to
Dowling’s romance with mead, an ancient drink that combines yeast with
honey and water, and occasionally other ingredients like fruits and
spices. The first year gave her enough honey to take care of household
needs, but it was the third year where she hit the jackpot. With
hundreds of pounds of unexpected honey containers on hand in the house,
Dowling needed to think outside of baking, toast topping and tea
sweetener.
“I must have had it in the
recesses of my mind that it could be made into alcohol,” says Dowling,
who also owns her own massage therapy business up the road in Grande
Prairie. “So I started researching. It was the Society for Creative
Anachronism website that landed me in the world of mead. I thought it
would be fun and whimsical to make it the way the Vikings did, actually
melting snow in the backyard in order to get the water I needed.”
Kristeva Dowling of Stolen Harvest Meadery affixes labels onto the recently bottled mead.Photo by Randy Vanderveen /Postmedia
That
first Saskatoon berry-infused micro batch of mead was a hit with family
and friends. Dowling followed that initial run in 2019 by bringing
samples to an amateur competition and Viking celebration in Okotoks
called Horde at the Hive. With little experience, she ended up winning
gold in three categories and taking bronze in a fourth, the presenter
telling Dowling early on that she may as well stay on the stage.
Needless to say, this was a confidence booster.
“When I got called up for the third gold medal, someone
from the crowd called out, ‘I want to come drinking at your place,’”
Dowling laughs.
The World Mead Challenge in November sealed the deal.
Stolen Harvest tied for second in the international competition with
its Saskatoon Honey Wine, while its Bochet Honey Wine and Coffee Bochet
Honey Wine scored just under it in the top 10. By this time Dowling was a
little more accustomed to the acclaim, though her father remained
astonished.
“It’s
funny,” she says with a wry chuckle. “When I told dad about the win he
said ‘how did this happen?’ I mean, it wasn’t like I went to school to
learn how to do this, and I haven’t been doing it for 25 years. I
actually now hear my grandma’s voice in my head, because after getting
my masters in social anthropology she said to me that she thought I
should do something with food. Now here I am, doing something with
food.”
In a store near you
Things
have progressed quickly for Dowling and Erme since the competition.
They’ve placed their mead at a few Edmonton liquor stores, including
Sherbrooke Liquor and Aligra, and are looking to expand into restaurants
like Yarrow. While still experimenting with small quantities of honey
brought back by friends from around the world, Dowling has also become a
little obsessed with making traditional meads produced from the bare
basics: local honey, yeast, and water.
“It’s exciting, but I also don’t think I could ever get
bored by the mix of potential flavours,” says Dowling, who just released
a mead that incorporates wild rose petals as flavouring. “There are so
many options, and my degree is serving me in a different way than
expected. I learned about hunter gathering from studying with Indigenous
peoples in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and now I’m hunting and
gathering for things to put in my mead. That’s partly where the name
Stolen Harvest comes from; it’s a play on the fact that I’m stealing the
harvest from the land to make my mead.”
Dowling is quick to note the land around her northern
Alberta farm is as important to the mead she makes as any techniques
she might use.
“When it comes to mead,
the idea of terroir is so important because the bees are really bringing
the taste of the area back to the hive,” Dowling points out. “The
wildflower honey from the area I live in is different from the
wildflower honey that someone makes a few hundred kilometres away, or in
a different country. In France, a beekeeper might get a lavender honey
because there are fields of it there.”
Stolen
Harvest is taking off so quickly that Dowling has had to look at
renting a larger spot for her enterprise. She’s long been committed to
the idea of self-sufficiency, an idea she explores in her 2011 book
Chicken Poop for the Soul: A Year in Search of Food Sovereignty, but now
she finds herself carefully navigating the world of localized commerce.
Whereas before she would harvest berries in the wild, she’s now making
connections with local haskap and Saskatoon berry producers, and after
giving up her own hive last summer, she’s buying honey from other
beekeepers in the area. She’s also making day trips to select liquor
stores and restaurants, slowly building up a circle of like-minded
businesses to work with.
“I’d like to align myself with restaurants who think
about being local and sustainable, and care about where their food comes
from,” she says. “We’re a micro-meadery; I don’t want to be the Walmart
of mead, I want to build relationships in the community.”
Wolf Point Distilling – is an artfulness distillery situated in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor of Chicago, Illinois
KOVAL Distillery – creates natural whiskey, liqueurs, and specialized spirits, founded in 2008
Rhine Hall Distillery – is owned by Charlie and Jenny, a father-daughter team
Chicago Distilling Company – is a women-owned and family managed
Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery – generates a ripple effect of certain change as for each bottle produced
Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery
Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery has been a
Chicago’s auxiliary in producing wine and mead using domestically
produced ingredients for more than two decades. The meads produced at
Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery are one of the most ecologically
produced beverages in the world. With more than 30 years of winemaking
experience, Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery is the prime winery in
Chicago and the sole producer of mead on the Northern Illinois Wine
Trail.
Being a mead producer, at Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery they
raise their own bees and collect their own honey. Each bottle they
produce generates a ripple effect of certain change as for each bottle
produced, their bees pollinate some 2 million flowers. Those, in turn,
engender 20 to 40 million seeds bound to become new flowers. The
positive impact plants have on the environment is well known. Meanwhile,
at their location on Chicago’s lakefront, they purify and use water
from Lake Michigan to produce their wines.
Two young Christchurch men are creating a buzz around mead.
The Buzz Club is a new mead business by Christchurch entrepreneurs
Wilbur Morrison, 22, and Edward Eaton, 23. Mead is a type of alcohol
formed from honey.
The pair said they were in the “development stage” but were well on
their way. Their brew was already being sold in Christchurch
supermarkets and liquor stores, and they aimed to break into New
Zealand’s other major cities next.
In its simplest form, mead is a mixture of yeast, water and honey.
Morrison and Eaton said the difference with their product was the range
of flavours and alcohol percentages they were producing to suit a
multitude of palates.
Morrison,
an agricultural science student at Lincoln University, was working as a
beekeeper when he sought a more profitable way to make the most out of
his honey.
He and some mates brewed his first batch of mead in a garage as “a bit of fun” about 18 months ago.
Eaton, a business marketing major and close friend of Morrison's,
joined the young brewer and took over the business’ social media and
advertising campaign, while Morrison managed logistics.
Supplied
Edward
Eaton, 23, left, and Wilbur Morrison, 22, are the two young minds
behind The Buzz Club – a business making a modern day mead, a form of
alcohol made from honey
To keep up with demand after settling on a few different flavours, the
pair contracted all production to a local brewer in Hornby, where they
conducted regular tastings and quality control.
Their mead first entered Sumner supermarkets about four months ago and
the feedback so far had been “better than we thought”, Morrison said.
“The biggest issue is that people don’t actually know what mead is,” he said.
“Our goal is to make it as different and accessible as possible.”
Mead is argued to be the world’s oldest form of alcohol and is created
by fermenting honey with water, sometimes with various fruits, spices,
grains, or hops. The alcoholic content ranges from about 3.5 per cent to
more than 18 per cent. Most of the beverage's fermentable sugar is
derived from honey.
The Buzz Club mainly produced a session mead, which is a 5.5 per cent
alcohol volume, dry, sparkling mead. It was brewed using native New
Zealand honey and included added fruit juice to complement the natural
fruity and floral honey flavours. It was now available across 14
supermarkets and liquor stores in Christchurch and on the company’s website.
Supplied
The Buzz Club’s mead range comes in a variety of different flavours
Morrison and Eaton’s next goal was to break into Auckland and Wellington stores.
The boys had got some competition. Towards the end of last year, Wanaka entrepreneur Chanelle O'Sullivan, 32, launched Borage + Bee Meadery, brewing a modern New Zealand version of traditional mead wine.
The Buzz Club was supported by the Te Ōhaka centre for young startup
businesses. The centre was involved in a variety of Christchurch
startups including an international sports software brand and fruit picking robot company.
Ever
wonder what mighty potion Vikings fortified themselves with as they
crisscrossed the oceans? Or what Aristotle was swigging from his goblet?
The answer lies with the humble honeybee—and the drink it has helped
produce for millenia.
Possibly the ancestor of all alcoholic beverages, mead has enjoyed
audiences across history, from humble working folk to soldiers and
pirates and even royalty. And while its popularity waned in recent
centuries, the modern era has seen a resurgence in this ancient,
golden-hued drink.
1. Mead Exists in Its Own Distinct Category
While often referred to as a honey wine, that’s not entirely accurate.
Made with honey, water, and yeast, rather than fruit, mead resides in
its own category of alcoholic beverage. Even the meads that are flavored
with a variety of fruit are not considered wines.
2. It’s Possibly the Oldest Alcoholic Beverage on Earth
Chinese pottery vessels dating from 7000 B.C.E. suggest evidence of mead
fermentation that predates both wine and beer. The first batch of mead
was probably a chance discovery: Early foragers likely drank the
contents of a rainwater-flooded beehive that had fermented naturally
with the help of airborne yeast. Once knowledge of mead production was
in place, it spread globally, and was popular with Vikings, Mayans,
Egyptians, Greeks and Romans alike.
3. The Golden Elixir Was Considered the Drink of the Gods
Referred to as “nectar of the gods” by ancient Greeks, mead was believed
to be dew sent from the heavens and collected by bees. Many European
cultures considered bees to be the gods’ messengers, and mead was thus
associated with immortality and other magical powers, such as divine
strength and wit. For this reason, mead continued to factor heavily in
Greek ceremonies even after its eventual decline in drinking popularity.
4. Under the Weather? Take a Glass of Mead.
Today’s physicians are unlikely to write a prescription for mead, but
certain kinds made with herbs or spices were used as medicine in early
England. Infusing herbs into a sweet mead made them more palatable, and
different varieties were thought to improve digestion, help with
depression and alleviate good old-fashioned hypochondria. These types of
spiced, herbal meads are called metheglin, derived from the Welsh word
for medicine.
5. Mead’s Flavor Varies Greatly Depending on Honey Type
A single honeybee produces a meager twelfth of a teaspoon of honey per
day. Because most meads require up to two gallons of the sweet stuff,
each drop is precious. The honey used determines the overarching flavor
of the mead, and can vary according to a honey bee’s particular diet of
nectar and pollen. Traditional mead often uses a mild honey such as
orange blossom, clover or acacia, but wildflower, blackberry and
buckwheat honeys produce great results with sturdier spiced meads.
6. Mead is Incredibly Diverse
Sweet, dry, still or sparkling—all describe varieties of mead. But amble
up the mead family tree a bit further and you’ll meet some of the more
eccentric relatives. You already know metheglin, but don’t forget
melomel, a mead that contains juice or fruit like blackberries and
raspberries. Then there’s cyser, an apple-based mead; acerglyn, made
with maple syrup; braggot, a mead/beer blend brewed with hops or barley;
rhodomel, a very old style laced with roses—and legions more.
7. You’ll Find Mead References in Classic Literature
The best part of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales?” When the mead starts
flowing. In The Miller’s Tale, mead is described as the draught of
townfolk and used to court a fair lady. Chaucer also mentions spiking
his claret with honey—clearly he had a sweet tooth.
Mead made its mark on other literary worlds, too. The epic poem“Beowulf”
features public mead halls front and center: The boisterous mead hall
called Heorot is attacked by the monster Grendel, motivating Beowulf to
battle. Even J.R.R. Tolkien got down with mead mania in Middle-earth,
referencing a mead hall as the kingdom of Rohan’s gathering place and
house of the king. Sumptuously decorated with a straw roof that appeared
to shine like gold from a distance, the mead hall was a space of great
importance and power.
8. Mead Is a Preferred Drink of Royalty
Queen Elizabeth II has been known to throw back a goblet of mead, and
even maintains a favorite recipe made with rosemary, thyme, bay leaves
and sweet briar. And according to some tales, Queen Makeda of Sheba gave
King Solomon a gift of T’ej, a bittersweet Ethiopian mead flavored with
buckthorn. T’ej can be traced to the fourth century and is still a
popular drink in the East African region.
9. You Can Thank Mead for Your Honeymoon
While oysters may be the most commonly appreciated aphrodisiac, mead was
the original. In fact, the term “honeymoon” comes from the medieval
tradition of drinking honey wine for a full moon cycle after a new
marriage—all that golden essence would supposedly ensure a fruitful
union bearing plenty of children. This mead-based insurance policy was
taken so seriously that a bride’s father would often include a month’s
worth of mead in her dowry.
10. Craft Mead Is on the Rise
Mead isn’t only the drink of sea-faring vikings and mummified royalty,
it’s also a popular choice today. There are now almost 250 meaderies in
America and even mead festivals around the country celebrating the
ancient beverage. The resurgence of this radiant drink seems assured due
to continued interest in craft brewing and distilling.
Ready to jump headfirst into the honeycomb? It’s surprisingly easy. Try your hand at homemade mead-making with a DIY starter kit, similar to beginner homebrewing setups but with a bit more buzz.
