“It’s so enjoyable,” I hear a patron say. We’re contained in the tasting room at Wilderbee Farm, overlooking an orchard of budding fruit timber, every with a glass of mead in hand.
The Mead Werks tasting room has cozy wooden accents, making it really feel like a mountain lodge inside a farmhouse. I can spy the honey packing containers throughout the garden, the place the bees are working laborious. They’re the one ones right here who don’t appear comfy.
Mead is having a little bit of a second. The calmly candy wine-like drink has been buoyed by rising curiosity in area of interest craft drinks, with most makers leaning into its historic renaissance faire associations: Tukwila’s Oppegaard Meadery is all in regards to the Viking vibe, whereas and Mr. B’s Meadery in Fremont embraces the drink’s whimsical popularity as magical alchemy. At Wilderbee, just a few miles west from downtown Port Townsend, mead is the star of one thing extra earthy.
Casey and Eric Reeter.
Casey and Eric Reeter got down to create a spot that felt calm and laid again—ultimately. Their dream was to construct a rural escape in retirement, impressed by farms in North Bend and Monroe they used as fast respites from their West Seattle life. However once they discovered the proper 12-acre spot sooner than anticipated, they moved to Port Townsend in 2007.
Right this moment the acreage is a working farm, full with licensed natural U-pick flower fields and pumpkin patch, and a herd of uncommon British Soay sheep identified for his or her small dimension. In fall, their high quality wool is hand-plucked. Guests can simply fill half a day between feeding the animals, working within the ceramics studio, wandering nature trails crisscrossing the property, and sipping mead.
Proudly owning and dealing the 12 acres is a far cry from retirement, however “it doesn’t really feel like work,” Casey says earlier than setting off to plant flower seeds within the greenhouse. In summer time, dahlias, zinnias, and sunflowers sprout right into a rainbow of U-pick choices, the $9 DIY bouquets of 25 stems every placing even Pike Place Market’s greatest to disgrace.
The addition of a meadery in 2019 to utilize Wilderbee’s flower fields simply made sense. The craft beverage business was skyrocketing—there are three cideries inside 10 miles of Wilderbee—and the Reeters felt their flowers might serve double obligation. They’d been beekeepers for years and knew honey. At first, their pantry turned a micro meadery for residence brewing experiments. They took a mead course at Ballard’s Nationwide Nordic Museum, then one other at UC Davis. Finally they went business.
The tasting room boasts a menu of 14 meads alongside desk video games and native artwork. String lights hold from wood rafters just under a tin roof, and at first look this might be an unbuttoned wine tasting room or woodsy brewery. However right here the bees all the time get high billing; the bar’s honeycomb tilework matches the tasting room’s brass bee-shaped door knocker.
Meads arrive in four-ounce pours, three-variety flights, or complete bottles. Casey’s dream flight: First, the Larryberry glowing blueberry mead named after her dad, Larry. The fizzy, cherry pink pour is crisp and fruity, nothing like my expectations of straight honey or one thing like kombucha. Subsequent, the Nectarious After Darkish Bourbon, which Casey calls a candy mead. “We put it in bourbon barrels for years—wherever from three to 5 years—and it has all these caramelly toasted marshmallow notes,” she says.
And eventually, a seasonal launch; in spring it’s a mango-infused dry selection, however the menu always incorporates daring flavors like apples, chai, and even smoked peppers. Spiced mead served heat will debut on the autumn equinox.
Casey calls her husband and herself “makers” above all. The ceramics studio hosts workshops in the summertime and her father sells woodcrafts like display-ready charcuterie boards and eccentric birdhouses within the present store. They sit on cabinets together with copper-distilled lavender important oils and balms crafted from the farm’s yield.
So possibly the house owners themselves are as busy because the bees outdoors. For everybody else, Wilderbee serves the farm’s mission, no less than as Casey places it: “to have folks come right here and simply chill out and escape the stress of their world and depart joyful.”
