It’s more or less exactly what Raphael Lyon had in mind when he and a partner decided to open a meadery in 2015. Lyon is also Enlightenment’s lead mazer, which is what you call a person who makes mead. “Basically it is the image of a world where it is totally normal to drink natural mead,” said Lyon. “And there is nothing weird about that.”
It’s just one of several meaderies that have sprung up, it so happens, since “Game of Thrones” gave a major assist to honey wine when it first appeared on HBO in 2011. In late 2018, New York state recognized the burgeoning local mead scene and passed a law allowing meaderies that use 100% New York state honey to offer tastings by the glass and to sell their mead to go.
In addition to Enlightenment Wines there is All-Wise Meadery in Brooklyn, which opened in 2018. It is owned in part by Dylan Sprouse, of Disney Channel fame (he was Zack in “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”). North of Manhattan, in Putnam County, there is Mysto Mead (slogan: “Flowers make nectar. Bees make honey. We make mead”).
There are meaderies on Long Island, in the Hudson Valley and throughout the region, including Melovino in Vauxhall, New Jersey. Mead is on the wine list at Grand Central Terminal’s Agern and in Brooklyn breweries like Grimm Ales and bars like Hops Hill.
“There are two groups of people,” according to Alison Kizu-Blair, a bartender at Honey’s. “People who know about us and come here with the intention of trying the mead, and then there is the person who has no idea why the bar is called Honey’s,” she said. “Those people are hesitant because they think it’s going to be really sweet. I have to give them a taste, and that changes everything.”
The mead, which is made on the premises, does feature fruits like apples, cherries and black currants as well as locally grown herbs.
But it is nothing like the sugary, heavy mead found at Renaissance fairs. Traditional mead is made with honey but is not necessarily sweet or sticky. It can be crisp — like a sauvignon blanc or rosé, and it is naturally gluten-free. It is definitely a different taste for someone bored with New York bar menus of endless IPAs.
“I bought some mead at a liquor store in Buffalo years ago, and this is way higher quality,” said Tim Munier, a nurse who lives in Brooklyn and was drinking at a booth at Honey’s. “I would definitely have this again.”
This more-refined honey wine is what is on offer at the new crop of New York’s meaderies, where the beverage is growing in popularity alongside natural wines, craft beer and artisanal spirits. “I really thought wine drinkers would be interested in it,” said Bob Klein of Mysto Mead, which opened five years ago in Carmel, New York. “But it really is the craft beer crowd and cocktail makers who are into it.”
Lyon suspected that mead might be having a moment when he started to have more informed conversations with owners and retailers. “Buyers at wine shops used to ask me, ‘What is mead?’ Now they ask, ‘What kind of mead is it? How is it made? With what?’ These are sophisticated questions from a discerning audience.”
Compared to craft beer — there are more than 6,000 breweries in the United States — mead is relatively niche. But it’s growing. According to the American Mead Makers Association, around 50 meaderies have opened annually over the past two years in the United States, and there are nearly 200 in the process of opening, which would put the total number of American meaderies at around 450. Sixteen of them are in New York state.
At All-Wise, Sprouse and his partner, Matt Kwan, are making their mead with New York state honey; they focus on producing a dry mead that highlights ingredients. Their Rhodomel, brewed with rose petals, won a gold medal in a National Honey Board competition in 2018. The pair plan to open a neighborhood bar and tasting room in the next few months, where they will serve their mead, drinks from a full bar and food.
“We came to Williamsburg and Greenpoint in college and did typical college stuff,” Kwan said. “We found that it really lends itself to trying new things whether that’s alcohol or going to some weird techno concert in Bushwick. Brooklyn is open to new concepts.”
Mysto Mead, which is off a road that confuses even Google Maps and is strewn with crater-size potholes, does not yet have a taproom but is a fixture at farmers markets and wine festivals. The meadery hopes to find a commercial home in Westchester County soon.
Bob Klein, who studied natural medicine, is one of the principals at Mysto. Metheglin, the Welsh word for medicine, “is what we call an herb-based mead,” he said. “It is good for you, honey is good for you, so I started making it at home. Part of the charm of mead is that people like exploring it.”
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Enlightenment Wines Meadery makes mead that is almost exclusively naturally fermented and uses only New York state ingredients: honey, local fruits, even dandelions. One reason mead may be intriguing to people is that it could well be the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world. “It’s really important to intuit the working method and approach that someone would have had 5,000 or 10,000 years ago,” Lyon said. “It brings a lot of complexity to the mead.”
Eileen Cartter, a freelance writer living in Brooklyn and a recent customer at Honey’s, said that mead was “definitely very buzz-worthy.” She pointed to what she was drinking, a sparkling Night Eyes mead made with apples, rose hips, cherries and sumac. “It is definitely like a treat, like a more fun version of those Martinelli’s sparkling ciders.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .