GLOBE AND MAIL August 3, 2006
By Shannon Moneo
SOOKE, B.C. -- When Bob Liptrot was just seven years old, he began helping a neighbour in east Vancouver with his beehives.
Now, 43 years later, Mr. Liptrot has a 100 hives of his own, and millions of bees, producing not only honey but also an ancient libation -- mead. The honey-based alcoholic drink, which dates back at least 8,000 years, is being embraced by people looking for a new buzz.
"The big attraction of mead is that you're drinking a piece of living history," said Mr. Liptrot, who with his wife, Dana LeComte, opened Western Canada's first commercial meadery in 2003.
Since then business at their Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery, 50 kilometres west of Victoria, has doubled each year. Last year, they sold 2,500 bottles of mead, infused with fruit, herbs and spices and bearing names such as solstice spiced metheglin, wassail blush and summer melomel.
Ms. LeComte, 36, attributes the blossoming interest in mead to a mix of customer sophistication and curiosity.
"When you've seen it all and done it all, mead is something new," she said. "People are really looking for something unique. A chardonnay is a chardonnay is a chardonnay."
Tugwell Creek's mead, which sells for $20 for a 750-millilitre bottle, has been enjoyed by customers around the world. It comes in many varieties, limited only by the producer's imagination.
Each year, the farm's 7.5 million bees produce about 2,500 kilograms of honey, with 60 per cent dedicated to mead-making and the rest sold as pure honey.
The couple, who have two young daughters, moved from Vancouver to their five-hectare farm in 1996. Two years later, they began selling wildflower honey after buying bees, installing hives, building a storeroom and bear-proofing their land.
But honey production was labour-intensive, with 80 per cent work, 20 per cent profit, Ms. LeComte said. So, searching for a more lucrative product, the couple made a beeline to mead.
Mr. Liptrot, who has a degree in entomology and had worked as an instructor for Outward Bound outdoor-adventure courses, had been experimenting with mead, making it for his own consumption for 25 years.
After meeting strict regulations from the provincial Liquor Distribution Branch (a "meadery" category does not exist so Tugwell Creek is classified as one of B.C.'s 110 wineries), the couple bought special equipment including a $10,000 filter, $10,000 extractor and $7,000 mixing tank.
Now, Mr. Liptrot said other honey producers call, wondering how their venture is doing and inquiring how to become mead makers themselves.
Ms. LeComte said their customers span all age groups. People in their 50s and older seem to especially enjoy dessert varieties of mead, such as the rich, thick sack mead, she said.
University students visit Tugwell Creek to buy a variety of bottles of mead by the case, often to give as gifts.
Drinking mead has become trendy among young people, agrees one of the owners of B.C.'s second mead operation, which opened last July.
"People are totally fascinated with anything that relates to our ancient history," said Helen Grond, who with her husband operates Middle Mountain Mead on Hornby Island.
Ms. Grond, 48, said young people of drinking age who are drawn to works like Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings are making mead their elixir of choice.
"Trends seem to start with young people."
She and her husband, Cam Graham, 50, have a five-hectare farm where they grow fruits and herbs to infuse their meads.
They don't have their own bees, however, so last year they had to buy 1,350 kilograms of honey.
Middle Mountain expects to sell about 3,000 bottles of mead, priced between $18 and $22, during its first year.
Ms. Grond, who used to be a red-wine enthusiast, says mead is now her drink of choice. She notes that a bottle of mead will keep for weeks in the fridge, thanks to honey's preservative qualities.
Because a minimal amount of chemicals go into mead and there are no heavy grape tannins, mead drinkers usually don't get tannin- or sulphite-induced headaches.
Ms. Grond believes the mead fad grew out of the microbrewery trend. Many U.S. mead producers were launched by those in the microbrew business where the trend was to explore ancient ways of making traditional beers, such as oatmeal stout.
As their beers became stranger and stranger, reaching into varieties from the Middle Ages, the microbrewers were eventually producing meads. Until the 1300s, when hops were discovered, beer was made with honey, Ms. Grond noted.
A Victoria restaurant, Cafe Brio, which focuses on regional cuisine, began serving Tugwell Creek's harvest melomel this spring.
Greg Hays, the restaurant's co-owner and wine buyer, had tried mead about 30 years ago. He expected the melomel to be syrupy. "But it's not some sloppy, sweet thing at all," he said. "It's much like a glass of wine."
Mr. Hays, who tastes dozens of new products each week, said he often talks wary customers into trying the mead, but once they do, they're converts.
Mead at a glance
What it is: Mead is the world's oldest fermented beverage, likely first imbibed by a pleasantly surprised cave-dweller who accidentally left some honey and water in a leather pouch, Vancouver Island mead maker Bob Liptrot says.
How it is made: Honey is mixed with water. Depending on the type of mead desired, fruit juice, spices or herbs are added.
At Mr. Liptrot's Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery in Sooke, 50 kilometres west of Victoria, the mixtures are placed in four oak barrels, which were imported from France, each one holding 230 litres, or in stainless steel tanks. The mead then "ferments out" for as little as two months or as long as two years. The shorter the duration, the sweeter the mead because the sugar in the honey causes the fermentation.
Where it is made: There are about 200 commercial mead operations around the world, including 15 in Canada and 60 in the United States, most of which began operating in the past five to seven years. B.C. is home to two (Tugwell Creek and Middle Mountain Mead, on Hornby Island) and a third is preparing to open in Langley. Three mead producers are to expected to open in Alberta in the next couple of years.

 

NORTH ISLANDER October 28th, 2005
By Doug Sloan
Tugwell Creek-Wine with some real honeyed character
Driving north out of Sooke towards Port Renfrew – distracted by the glimpses of the open Pacific on the left – it’s easy to miss the discreet sign at the bottom of the driveway on the right that leads up to Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery.
Add a low-keyed approach to marketing to a location half ways up the back of beyond on the far side of Vancouver island and Tugwell Creek’s continued existence is a puzzle – at least until you taste their products.
In Canada, to date, only Quebec has been a real hive of activity when it comes to mead-making. This follows the long-standing European tradition of mead being made continuously mostly in countries and regions where grapes won’t grow. These are often also spots where beer is the local beverage-not wine- for the same reason!
Mead is an alcoholic beverage made from honey that generally has water or even grapes, grape juices, or wine added to it. As long as it is fermented from at least 50 percent honey it can technically be called “mead.” Rich in honey and often very sweet, this is the style of mead that used to be available, here in B.C., from Ontario’s London Winery. More recently, there was a brandy based liqueur flavored with herbs and sweetened with honey made in Yorkshire, England called “Bronte”- after the unhappy sisters Charlotte and Emily who gave us Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Bronte, the liqueur, no longer available here, was even sweeter than the sherry- styled London Winery Mead.
“Sack” is a sweeter style of mead, with more honey. But not all honey beverages are so sweet. “Melomel” is made with fruit or fruit juice – but not apples or grapes. “Metheglin” is a honey wine made with herbs, spices, and extracts. “Morat” is made with mulberries. “Pyment” is made with honey and grapes. “Hippocras”is made from honey, grapes, and spices.
“Cyser” is honey with apples or apple cider (also peaches, cherries, or pears). “Braggot” is honey and malt, a kind of mead-beer. “T’ej” is honey, water, and hops. It is the national drink of Ethiopia and has a unique taste imparted by the extract of the Gesho tree-honey-sweet and bitter.
With this range of honey wines possible, the preconception that they have to be sweet and sticky flies right out the window and into the fields where the bees are plundering clover, salal and fireweed – as well as blackberries and thistles – to make distinctively complex and tasty hone4ys for Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery.
Bob Liptrot and Dana LeComte established Tugwell Creek Honey Farm in 1998. In 2003 their 12 acre farm on a hillside overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca acquired the license that make it British Columbia’s first commercial meadery. Since then Liptrot and LeComte have had trouble keeping up with the demand for their unique Vintage Meads, Metheglins, and Melomels.
Tugwell Creek Harvest Melomel (750ml) $18.82 has the faintest blush of pink with an underlying hint of orange. It is softly dry, slightly honey-spiced and dusted with a hint of Marion berries that have enriched the blend. Sweetness barely comes to mind, though the wine has a remarkably “weighty” density on the tongue. Balance, refinement and elegance are very obviously the house style.
Tugwell Creek Wassail Blush Sack Mead (200ml) $21.16 is a coppery burnished pink. The underlying honey adds floral notes to the berry aromatics. Flavours of fresh peaches slide into strawberry and there are smooth and subtle oak notes. Although this is not a “dry” wine, its perfectly balanced acid structure keeps it from seeming too sweet. Making Sack Mead takes a huge amount of honey and that makes it much more expensive that Metheglin or Melomel. Any of these honeyed wines would make wonderful gifts for that wine lover who thinks they have tried everything. “Wassail” comes from the Norse toast “Ves heill” –“be in good health”.
The riches style currently available at the farm is Tugwell Creek Wassail Gold Sack Mead (200ml) $21.16. Pale gold like a young French Sauternes dessert wine, it is both sweeter and spicier than the Blush Sack. Honey oranges, cloves, and cardamom mingle with the rich French Oak vanilla flavours.
Visiting Tugwell Creek Farm is definitely the best way to acquire some of their astonishingly elegant products. Beyond that half a dozen private Beer and Wine stores already carry Tugwell Creek Meadery honey wines. Check Tugwell Creek’s web site for details at www.tugwellcfreekfarm.com or call 250-642-1956. And yes they also sell honey!

EAT MAGAZINE MAY/ JUNE 2005
By Monique Cummings
Apiarist and mead maker Bob Liptrot looks rather sleepy. Not surprising when you learn that he and Dana LeComte, joint owners-operators of Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery, have just welcomed two new arrivals. The birth of their second daughter and the release of their first Sack Mead occurred within one week of each other. “We’re working slightly longer hours on all fronts,” smiles Liptrot.
Nevertheless, he’s not too exhausted to wax lyrical about the Sooke Meadery’s newest product. “I wanted to make a rich, full bodied dessert-style wine…to broaden people’s horizons,” he explains, “Mead is not just honey and water. There are different permutations.” Available in two varieties, Wassail Gold and Wassail Blush, these latest additions to the mead cellar are different indeed.
Both Sack Meads coat the glass, filling the nose with spice and honey. The plane gold variety has primary mellow flavours of honey, cinnamon, and oak. These are replaced with intense sweetness upon swallowing, followed by subtle nutmeg, clove and ginger notes that warm the back of the throat and make the inside of the upper lip tingle. The finish is so lingering and delicious that my fellow tasters and I dubbed it the ‘after-happy.’
In the Wassail Blush, the Marion berries tint the mead with an unusual orange shade of pink. The initial flavour is one of fruit and the intricacies of fireweed and salal honey. Then come the oak and cinnamon notes that lead the way to a shorter and slightly sharper finish.

Still young meads, Liptrot recommends that bottles be laid down for a least a year. “I’m looking forward to [trying them] five, ten, fifteen years from now.” He is also eagerly anticipating collaborating with local chefs to produce recipes using his latest ambrosial creation, and adding it to the wine lists his other meads already grace in many of Vancouver Islands fine restaurants and brew pubs.
The meadery has produced 500 litres (220 cases) of each Sack Mead variation and will wait to see how well it sells before considering another batch. As Liptrot explains, “ it takes a huge amount of honey (compared to other meads) and is very expensive to make, if you do it properly.”
I, for one, am confident that it will fly off the shelves at the speed of the bees that helped create it. The taste made me realize why ancient civilizations elevated mead to a symbol of life giving strength and divinity. I am sure that all modern-day lovers of dessert wines will be similarly convinced.