Maine Mead Works

Mead, or honey wine, in an ancient drink that had its heyday in the middle ages, when it was the drink of the upper class and royalty.  Consequently, much of the mead available is marketed in renaissance or old style packaging with matching advertising (and is often spelled with the old English e attached, meade).  Thankfully, mead is coming around and more modern approaches are being taken.  One such approach is being taken by Maine Mead Works.  Instead of taking the medieval route, Maine Mead Works allows the bee to do their advertising. 

Maine Mead Works exists in a small warehouse in Portland, Maine.  The entire operation is contained within three rooms.  There is, in typical Maine fashion, a sign on the door advising you inquire next door if no one is there at the moment.  It was created by Eli Cayer and Ben Alexander.  The meadery was founded on the principles of healthy environment and local community.  Ben and Eli consulted Dr. Garth Cambray, of the South African Makana Meadery, who earned his PhD focusing on advanced mead making systems.  In 2007 Dr. Cambray came to Maine to help Eli and Ben design their meadery.  They use a continuous fermentation process to create their mead.  After the mead is fermented it is put into stainless steal tanks with some oak chips for flavor.  If the mead is to be flavored this would be when the fruit is thrown in.  Once to the mead has been aged to its desired level it is filtered with the use of a special clay to which proteins bond, and is then bottled by hand. 

On my visit to the meadery, Eli tasted me on the dry, half-dry, and blueberry Honeymaker meads.  The dry mead is what all their meads start out as and it tastes like a nice light and dry Riesling.  While you can taste the honey it is not overpowering in the least bit.  I find you get more out of it if you drink it at room temperature as opposed to chilled.  The half-dry mead has some honey added to it after the fermentation process.  This adds sweetness and also some viscosity to the mead.  The blueberry mead is not what I expected at all.  The taste is light and the blueberry flavor is subtle.  I was expecting a much sweeter and jammy wine, and was happy to be surprised.  The great thing about mead is that, since it is made from naturally sterile honey, you can open a bottle and leave it out for a week or two.  The mead really gets better with each day it has been open; flavors of spice and oak start appearing along with burnt sugar and molasses.  I took one bottle and had a small glass from it each day for a week – what a great week that was!  I’m sure in 10 years the meadery will be boasting some amazing aged products.

Maine Mead Works mead is currently only available in Maine, for sale is some liquor stores, and on the pour at some bars.  They are constantly experimenting with new things.  Eli informed me he had recently made a batch of strawberry mead he took down to a local Portland pub that sold out in 3 hours.  Keep a look out for these guys and get your hands on some bottles of their Honeymaker mead if you can.  www.mainemeadworks.com