From mainstreet-nashville.com
In East Nashville, Honeytree Meadery is a cheerful white rectangle, the building itself reminiscent of a beehive box. And on this sunny afternoon, the honey tree is buzzing with activity.
Just days ahead of the 2021 Tennessee Honey Festival — cancelled last year due to the pandemic — co-owners Ross Welbon and Dru Sousan are working hard to prepare their signature craft mead for sale.
The meadery is one of just two in Middle Tennessee, and the only in Nashville, carefully brewing a spirited nectar with honey from local beekeepers and its own private apiary of 30 beehives in East Nashville.
“We pride ourselves on either knowing the beekeepers or being the beekeepers for all the honey we use in house,” Sousan says.
Honeytree Meadery co-owners Ross Welbon and Dru Sousan use honey from their 30-plus beehives to make their mead. Larry McCormack / Main Street Nashville
This will be Honeytree Meadery’s first year as a vendor at the festival, and with up to 25,000 people expected to attend on Sunday, preparations are immense. But the festival isn’t the only big development on the horizon. Starting Oct. 11, Honeytree Meadery will be available in liquor stores and restaurants all over Nashville — the product’s first foray into commercial distribution.
“We’ll sleep when we’re dead,” Sousan says with a grin.
It’s been a long road to get here, working through the pandemic and extensive damage from the tornado that ripped through East Nashville in March 2020. It all started when Welbon discovered he had a knack for brewing while working at a local brewery. A self-taught beekeeper, he started making mead with honey from his backyard beehives.
“You can’t read through a beekeeping book without seeing mead in there somewhere,” he says. “It progressed from a hobby into more of a profession.”
It takes about two to three months to go from honey to the mead bottle. Each batch of mead takes a two- to three-week fermentation process, then the flavour needs time to develop and for the mead to become clear.
Honeytree Meadery in East Nashville sells mead on tap or in bottles. Larry McCormack / Main Street Nashville
Honeytree Meadery first became available in local restaurants in 2018, and the next year, the business opened a tasting room at the East Nashville location. It’s developed into a sort of clearinghouse for local honey producers to sell honey. Sousan says when local beekeepers are looking to sell big batches of honey, the meadery is a good option.
“It doesn’t cost them any packaging because we take the honey, dump it into the tanks, clean the buckets and give them the buckets back,” he says. “Our goal is to be the highest source of revenue for beekeepers in the entire state.”
Every bottle of mead produced is made from Middle Tennessee local honey.
In case you were wondering, while consuming local honey has many benefits, including boosting gut health and helping with seasonal allergies, it’s not likely that mead brewed with local honey has the same properties.
“I always tell people, if you believe it is, it can be,” Welbon says, chuckling. “But the alcohol probably kills off anything that’s beneficial for you.”
But since mead is made with only honey, water and yeast, it’s a good alternative for people with gluten intolerance or issues with tannins in wine.
Both owners are looking forward to meeting with other local beekeepers at the Honey Festival this weekend and raising awareness about the importance of local beekeeping.
“Even if you don’t like honey or you don’t like mead, your garden, your food, your yard, everything depends on these bees,” Sousan says.
Honeytree Meadery will have three selections available at the festival: its flagship Basic Batch, made with dark wildflower honey; the Bouquet Toss, made with rose hip, hibiscus and linden flower; and the Signature Series, a sweeter sampling with a note on each bottle tracing the origin of the honey used to brew.
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