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This fermented honey wine is the next big thing in craft beverage.
Sitting at a table inside The Hive, Blacksnake Meadery’s Roanoke tasting room, I watch as co-owner Steve Villers pours a golden elixir called Sweet Virginia into a glass. When I take a sip, I’m pleasantly surprised by its floral aroma and slightly herbal finish.
“This is mead?” I think to myself.
It’s a far cry from what one might associate with mead: Vikings hoisting steins, Beowulf’s mead hall or Hagrid ordering a round at the Three Broomsticks in Harry Potter. Mead, wine made from honey, is the world’s oldest fermented beverage but thanks to a renewed interest in mead making, it’s no longer a drink of yore. (The fact that it’s gluten-free is also a boon to its rising popularity.)
According to the American Mead Makers Association, the number of commercial meaderies in the U.S. increased from 30 in 2003, to 200 in 2013, and nearly 300 as of early 2016. Producers like Blacksnake Meadery, which Villers founded in Dugspur with his wife Joanne in 2006, and Atheling Meadworks, established by Stephen Ausband in 2019, are giving modern mead its due here in Roanoke.
“People hear ‘honey’ and think they don’t like mead because it’s sweet,” Villers says. “There’s a lot of variety; [there’s] something for everyone. It’s as diverse as the people who make it.”
There are around a dozen different styles of mead, varying in sweetness, finish and alcohol content (ranging from six to 18%). Because of honey’s high sugar content (it’s around 80%), it can’t ferment on its own, so mead makers, called mazers, dilute it with water and add yeast to make it ferment like wine.
Dry meads, or those with no residual sugar, call for more dilution, while sweet meads call for less dilution. Traditional meads are considered semi-sweet, including Blacksnake’s Sweet Virginia. Other common styles include melomels, which are brewed with fruit, such as Atheling Meadworks’ blackberry-forward Shield Maiden. Metheglins are crafted with herbs and spices, such as Blacksnake’s Ginger Bee Brew, made with Virginia-grown ginger and lime.
In addition to the style of mead and each mazer’s approach, a mead’s characteristics vary depending on the honey. Honey’s terroir—informed by various nectar sources including blossoms, fruits and herbs—gives mead nuanced aromas and flavors in the same way that grapes’ terroir does for wine.
“It’s surprising the complexity you can get out of mead with very simple ingredients because of the complexity of the honey,” Ausband says. “You can use the same recipe, the same everything and the variation of honey will give you a huge difference in the final product.”
Atheling’s meads are made with raspberry blossom honey, whose bright floral qualities especially shine in the citrus-leaning Lyres Song. Ausband is currently fermenting a pyment (a melomel brewed with grapes) using Virginia wildflower honey. Next, he plans to produce a limited-edition mead using robust, earthy Italian chestnut honey.
Most of Blacksnake’s mead features Virginia honey, much of it produced from hives in the Villers’ backyard in Roanoke (they also have hives at the Dugspur meadery). Villers finds that many dark wildflower varietals of Virginia honey are nutty and a little bitter, while honey from Roanoke, particularly black locust honey, possesses a deep floral aroma.
To appreciate meads’ subtleties, one should taste mead as one would other wines. Take in visual cues such as color, then swirl the glass to observe the viscosity. Swirling also helps incorporate air to release aromas; sniff before you sip. Consider temperature, too. Villers serves sweeter meads at room temperature to showcase aromas, and drier ones chilled. Ausband serves Lyres Song chilled but discovered that once warmed, it drinks like mulled wine.
Ready to swirl, sniff and sip? Explore the sidebar below to discover a mead based on what you already like to drink.
Where to Buy
Find Atheling Meadworks meads at Barrel Chest, online at athelingmead.com/shop or at Atheling’s production facility at 451 McClanahan Street (open from 1-6 p.m. every Saturday for tours, tastings and sales).
Blacksnake Meadery meads are available at The Hive, Barrel Chest, Eli’s Provisions and Mr. Bill’s Wine Cellar, or online at blacksnakemead.com.
Like that? Try this mead.
Beer
Braggots are made with malted grains and often hops, too. Try Blacksnake’s Hoppy Bee Brew, in which honey is boiled with local hops to create a slightly bitter brew reminiscent of pale ale.
Cider
Cysers are made with apples, so they’re a go-to for cider fans.
Sparkling wine
Bottle conditioned meads, like Blacksnake’s line of Bee Brews, are completely dry and lightly carbonated. As with champagne, a little sugar is added at bottling; the yeast in the bottle helps convert the sugars into CO2 which creates effervescence. Try Blacksnake’s Berry Bolla Bee, a slightly funky, black raspberry mead on tap.
White wine
Opt for traditional meads that skew dry, such as Atheling’s Lyres Song, which is floral up front with citrus and balsam undertones.
Red wine
Look for pyments, which are brewed with wine grapes, or seek out melomels with jammy fruit flavors. Atheling’s Shield Maiden is fermented with blackberries and aged with heavy toast French oak chips which add the vanilla notes and tannic qualities characteristic of oak-barrel-aged reds.
Dessert wine
Bochets are made with caramelized honey (some mazers heat the honey until it’s burnt to impart toasted marshmallow notes). Blacksnake Meadery’s amber-hued, sherry-like Meloluna makes it an ideal stand-in for Port.
Cocktails
Treat mead like a mixer. Villers mingles Meloluna with chilled vodka, while Ausband pairs Lyres Song with ginger ale. During Wasena’s 100th birthday celebration, Blacksnake’s neighbors, Bloom and Wasena Tap Room, offered mead cocktails, including a lemon-bourbon number with Sweet Virginia, and a tart-fizzy Cherry Bee Brew margarita, respectively.
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