Frequently Asked Questions

Naturally, we get a lot of questions about mead and how we make it.  Here are some common questions and answers.

What is mead?

Mead is an alcoholic beverage in which the majority of the fermentables comes from honey.  Honey is the "base" of it, so to speak.  Mead is technically a wine.  Not all wines come from grapes!

It is thought that mead was first made around 7000 to 10000 BC!

Do you use local honey?

Yes.  We use a lot of local honey.  Thousands of pounds per year, in fact.  While not all of our honey is from Western North Carolina, the majority of it is.

Are meads always sweet?

No.  Meads can be made extremely sweet or bone dry - it is up to the meadmaker.  Many commercial examples are very, very sweet with residual sugar levels of 10% or more.  None of ours are like that.  Our meads have residual sugar levels of 1.5% to 5%.

How do you make your meads so different?

Each of our meads is "custom designed" so to speak.  We do not take our Traditional Mead and simply add spices or fruits to them in order to flavor them.  Every mead of ours has a different combination of honey, yeast, oak, etc... that is specifically chosen to bring out certain flavors.  Try our Traditional and Reserve side by side.  Incredible differences!

Do you use extracts or flavorings?

No.  Our meads that have fruit in them were made from real fruit.  Our meads with spices were made from real spices.  Our Ginger-Apricot mead, for example was made with whole chunks of ginger root that was soaked into the mead in the fermenter for many months.