Mead for the Rest of Us

A romp to find beauty and the bees

Jun 11, 2024

The other week, I went to see a man about some mead.

As you do.

Okay, maybe you don’t. I never have before.

Before we wade in too deep—mead is a fermented drink, otherwise known as honey wine. You should know that I am not a mead aficionado. In fact, in my one or two interactions with the beverage prior to this endeavor, I’ve found it to be syrupy sweet, and quite frankly not my favorite.

If you’d asked me how I imagined mead is concocted, I’d have painted you a picture of a Viking moonshine situation—a dank back shed, a guy’s belly hanging out of his shirt while he dips a skull mug into an open barrel, flies buzzing overhead, his pal chewing on a giant turkey leg in the background.

It’s quite possible I filled in my lack of knowledge with images of a pirate festival my brother and I went to a while back. To be fair—mead does have a history with the Vikings and a few less-than-honorable associations. I’m resisting peppering you with fun facts so we don’t get too off-topic, but they are a good read if you want to go down the mead-hole.

All right Jackie, you don’t like mead, you’ve invented a shady pirate situation for where it’s made, so why on God’s green earth are you hunting for it now?

Blame it on a story—it’s always a well-told story.

This story was in Edible magazine, in an article about Heidrun Meadery called “The Solace of the Rains.” You had me at solace. It went on to tell of how it’s been a decade since the maker had sage honey because the black button California sage suffered from a long-term lack of water and lay dormant for ten years. 10 years! 10! With the magnificent rains of 2023, there was a superbloom, and the sage came back.

It bloomed, and the bees made honey, and the makers made mead.

This tale nearly killed me with delight—I sat beaming at the magazine, looking a bit deranged, as if I’d been deep in the mead at 11 a.m.

In the next weeks, I could not stop thinking about that bloomin’ sage. Maybe this is 40, owning my plant nerding and embracing the fact that I love a botanical curiosity. It feels like either plants or birds. I saw a meme the other day—“One day you’re young and carefree, the next you’re like ‘Is that a tufted titmouse at my bird feeder?’” Although I enjoy the birds, humans are my favorite animal, so it’s the plants for me. I keep telling my dad he made a farmer out of me after all.

From my amateur botany skills, I believe this is a variety of California sage I found in a garden the other day—although not the black button sage, you get the idea

And now I had myself a botanical curiosity that involved dormancy? Double swoon. If you’ve taken my Art Camp for Grown-Ups course, you know I’m captivated by a tale about dormancy. It’s a newfound swooning, one that got me through a deep winter in the middle of the pandemic. I’d ended up at my parents’ home in Illinois, jobless, houseless, all of my California dreams in a muddy puddle on the floor. While I was trying to find my way, I stumbled upon this quote:

“Winter is a time for dormancy, not death. Some life has died, but much of it has gone underground, into hibernation, awaiting a season of renewal and rebirth. So winter invites us to name whatever feels dead in us, to wonder whether it might in fact be dormant—to ask how we can help it, and ourselves, ‘winter through.’”
—Parker Palmer

Dormant, not dead.

That line warmed my shivering heart, especially as I gazed on the miles of frozen prairie and wondered what I was doing with my life. A lot felt dead. A lot had died. But the idea that some of it was dormant, not dead, was a hot toddy to the soul. It wasn’t overly cheery, pretending things weren’t bare and harsh, denying that we all have seasons when it looks like everything is gone. It was all the hope I could stomach at the moment—hope that my dreams were tucked underground instead of hacked away, and that perhaps, in a different season, they would push through the soil and bud again.

It’s been three years since I first read that quote. The winter lingered over me for a long time, and some things are still dead. And yet, I’ve felt a loosening in the recent months—a glimmer here, a glimmer there, phrases I put on a vision board over ten years ago coming to life in ways I couldn’t have predicted. It’s all delicate and tender, and I feel protective of these baby shoots.

And so I had to go see about the solace of the rains.

Over the river and through the woods, to see the mead we go. I kidnapped my friend Sara, and we meandered to Pt. Reyes and wandered to a bakery and on a hike at the coast. Even though I needed to see the meadery, I still imagined the back shed situation and had low expectations for the experience.

But the mead surprised me. When we pulled up, there was a charming old greenhouse turned into a tasting room, walls of adorable honey jars, and picnic tables tucked underneath a curly willow tree. As we settled into our picnic in the olive grove before the tasting, I sighed, “Oh, these are good people.”

The jolly good people poured our our first glass and encouraged us to roam around the Marin wildflowers while sipping the nectar from the Marin wildflowers. It was such a well curated experience, I was swooning again. It seems obvious now, but I hadn’t clocked that there would be flowers involved. Nary a bloom graced my Viking moonshine scenario.

As we looped by the fields, I took a sip and discovered it was delicious. I asked the girl pouring, “Am I just seduced by the loveliness of this place? I didn’t think I liked mead.” She laughed and told us that becasue it is sparkling, it is much lighter and tastes more like champagne than the non-sparkling variety. That made sense because I do love a bubble.1 After I told them the reason for our adventures, we managed to procure one of the eight bottles left of the precious sage—it felt like being inducted into a secret society.

Maybe it was the mead, or the sunshine, or the obnoxiously perfect moment strolling in the blooms, but something unfurled in me that day. A friend said recently, “Our stories are long,” and I couldn’t help thinking about it as we wound through the redwoods on our way home.

Some seasons we lie dormant, and some seasons, like the brave little sage, we bloom again.

What does the word dormant bring up for you? Is this a season of dormancy or blooming?

I’d love to hear—

Adventures in Being Human by Jackie Knapp

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