David Myers, owner of Redstone Meadery, went from home brewing to making mead, a wine fermented from honey. His mead has been on the market since July at restaurants in Boulder and Denver.
Carmel Zucker

New Boulder meadery aims to popularize honey wine
By Greg Glasgow Camera Staff Writer

Among beer connoisseurs, Boulder has a reputation for being ahead of the curve. The American Homebrewers Association is located here, as is the Association of Brewers, which hosts the annual Great American Beer Festival. Boulder also was one of the key players in the microbrew revolution of the '80s and '90s.

And if homebrewer-turned-pro David Myers has his way, Boulder soon will be part of what he sees as the next big thing: the Mead Revolution.

In September 2000, Myers and Julia Herz (who handles sales and marketing) opened Redstone Meadery, a company devoted to reviving interest in the honey wine that's believed to be humankind's oldest fermented beverage.

"All we're really doing is bringing an old thing back," says Myers, a former English major who first encountered mead in classic literature. "Honey wine is what they offered to Zeus and the other mythological gods of the time. The Vikings drank mead before setting off into the frigid seas — Beowulf sat in mead halls. You also find it in Renaissance and Shakespearean literature; Falstaff would sit and have a cauldron of mead. The word 'honeymoon' comes from the tradition of drinking honey wine for one full moon cycle (beginning on the wedding night) to ensure baby boys."

Technically, mead is wine, but Redstone Meadery's 3,500-square-foot warehouse on Old Pearl Street is set up more like a brewery than a winery, with a seven-kettle system salvaged from a failed brewpub in Cheyenne, Wyo., and a tasting room/gift shop offering paperback copies of "Beowulf" along with half-gallon growler jugs and logo T-shirts. For Myers and Herz, it's about education and awareness as much as profit margins.

"We are in the business of promoting Redstone Meadery, but we (also) are in the business of promoting mead," says Myers, who estimates that Redstone is one of just 30 commercial meaderies nationwide. "We hope to see, in the next five years, that number grow from 30 to 100. We believe that we are too small yet to be an industry, and we need to become an industry much like the microbrew world did in the early '80s. We have to get it to the point where it gets into our social consciousness; where people begin to go towns and say 'Got any mead made around here?'"

In January, Redstone will release its Mountain Honey Wine, a traditional mead made with a mix of orange blossom honey and wildflower honey. It will be sold in wine bottles and have a 12 percent alcohol content. That will be followed by Vintage Reserve, a port-like dessert wine that's 13 to 16 percent alcohol.

For the time being, the only Redstone product on the market is Nectar, a carbonated, fruit-flavored draft mead served cold. It has a lower alcohol content — just 8 percent. With its faint sweetness and winey bite, it tastes more like a hard cider than a glass of chardonnay.

"A lot of the marketing plan was based on studying the hard cider market and its tremendous percentage growth in the alcohol industry, as well as looking at the wine varietal market, which has become very popular in the wine industry," Myers says. "The black cherry cabernets and those kinds of products are actually 8 percent alcohol, sparkling, and considerably sweeter than this product. We are in that same kind of marketplace. We're not really beer, we are wine, technically, but this product is not wine. It hits that middle place."

The Nectar begins as a kettle of hot water to which 360 pounds of honey are added. (Redstone gets its honey from Madhava Honey in Lyons.) After 30 minutes, yeast and oxygen are added, and the mixture is transferred to a temperature-controlled fermenter, where it spends seven to nine days. From there it's pumped into a cold room where it stabilizes further. The product sits with fruit puree (black raspberry or boysenberry) for another seven to 10 days; it's then filtered, carbonated and kegged. Kegs — 7.9 and 15.5 gallons — are available at Liquor Mart; Nectar also is available on draft at restaurants like Jax in Denver and the Rockies Pub and 14th Street Bar and Grill in Boulder.

"It is for someone who likes a little sweetness in their wine," says Susie Chandler, bar manager at the 14th Street Bar and Grill, who sells 8-ounce pours of the Nectar in wine glasses for $4.50. "Some people don't like to drink sweet wines. But if someone is interested, say, in a Riesling or a white zinfandel — some people just pick a white zinfandel because of lack of better knowledge or experience. They make it easy: 'Oh I'll just have a white zin.' That's when you can step up and say, 'Hey, do you want to try something new? We have this new product, new company, Boulder-based, it's honey wine ...' It is lower in alcohol too, which people like. It's definitely a good alternative. I think for the holidays it will probably do pretty well."

Redstone has the support of the tight-knit Boulder brewing community — Rockies brewery washes the Redstone kegs, and Charlie Papazian of the Association of Brewers and Paul Gatza of the American Homebrewers Association have offered their endorsements as well.

"I think this is the beginning of a new renaissance in mead-making," Gatza says. "Mead is so good; the big issue right now is that there's not much awareness about it. That awareness really exists in the homebrewing communities, but what we're seeing is with more meaderies coming out and more people getting exposed to homebrewed meads, people will start thinking about fermented honey. I think the business across town is going to do real well."

In the past few months Nectar also has spent time on the rotating guest tap at Redfish, where brewmaster and part owner Brian Lutz said customers seemed intrigued by the unique product.

"I love Dave, he's a good friend of mine, but I was skeptical because it's new," Lutz says. "It's fruity, and it's purple, but I'll tell you what — I watched people drink it, and their reactions, and they liked it. More often than not, a person who ordered a glass got a second. It blew me away."

Myers ran his own T-shirt business in Boulder before opening Redstone; he thought for a while about opening a brewpub. But his true passion, he said, lay in brewing — and as he had won several homebrewing contests with his meads, he decided to take the plunge.

"No matter how bad my day is at work, I make mead for a living," he says. "How bad can it be? That's what I was looking for and that's why I'm willing to take the chance. This is a crazy idea, we're just going to pull it off."

This recipe was created by Boulder resident Andrea Tringo.

Rock Cornish Game Hen in Boysenberry Nectar

• 4 rock Cornish game hens
• 2 cups Redstone Boysenberry Nectar
• 2 tsp fresh rosemary
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted
• 2 cups cubes of whole wheat French bread brushed with olive oil, salt and pepper and toasted in 350 degree oven
• ¾ cup fresh or frozen cranberries
• Kosher salt to taste
• Pepper to taste

Directions: Preheat oven to 350. Boil mead, rosemary and cranberries until reduced by half. Toss half the melted butter with the bread crumbs.

Rinse birds and pat dry; rub cavity and surface with coarse (kosher) salt or sea salt. Stuff birds with bread crumbs, and place in roasting pan.

Pour reduction over birds, then the rest of the melted butter. Grind black pepper on them, and bake for 1¼ hours, basting occasionally, until meat thermometer in one of the birds declares them safe or juices from thigh run clear after piercing.

This recipe is adapted from the Bartender's Margarita at www.webtender.com.

Nectarita

• 1½ ounces Cuervo premium or Gold tequila
• ¾ ounce Redstone Meadery Black Raspberry Nectar
• 3 ounces sweet and sour mix
• Juice of ½ lime
• Float Grand Marnier
• Splash cranberry juice

Directions: Shake tequila, Black Raspberry Nectar, sweet & sour, cranberry juice and lime juice in a pint glass. Rim another pint glass with salt and transfer contents. Float the Gran Marnier, garnish with a lime and straw, and serve.

Redstone Meadery is located at 4700 Pearl St., Unit 2A; tours and tastings are offered from 3-6:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, 12:30-4 p.m. Saturdays or by appointment. For more information, call (720) 406-1215 or check out redstonemeadery.com.