(upbeat music) >>I am here at Silver Hand Meadery in Williamsburg with Glenn Lavender.

Glenn, thanks for having us.

>>Of course, thanks for coming.

>>Absolutely, I am so excited to hear about meads, because people don't understand that mead is really a wine.

>>Yeah, honestly, when we opened our place, I didn't realize we were opening an educational facility.

That is kind of what this has turned into it feels like, because most people come in never having had mead before, not understanding it, and it's funny how many people come in and say, "I don't even know what this is," but you still came, that's great.

>>Yeah, that's great, that's great.

>>So, mead, at its simplest is honey, water, and yeast, so, I like to use this generally to help just for visualization, so, this is a one gallon jug that you might buy cider in, and it's about 25% honey, 75% water, and you blend those together.

You add yeast to it.

I'm giving you the simple version, of course, but that's essentially it.

The yeast consumes the sugar like it does with grapes like it does with beer.

As it consumes sugar, it creates alcohol and carbon dioxide.

We let all the carbon dioxide off gas like wines do and then we're left with...

This ratio I just gave you will give you about 12%, 13% alcohol and no sweetness, actually, at that point.

>>Wow, you're kidding.

>>Right, so, we control that, right?

>>Right, sure.

>>Just like winemakers control how much sweetness they have, but we found, we make honey wine and if people come in and it's not sweet, they're really confused, so, we do tend to make sure we've got some good level of sweetness in our meads.

>>Well, I'd love to taste some of these meads.

>>Great.

I'm gonna start you with our traditional mead, which is, again, honey, water, and yeast.

We name this one Virginia Tonight.

>>I love it.

>>And like all of our meads, this is tied to a song, so, there's an old song actually on a Foo Fighters album, but Nora Jones is singing with Dave Grohl.

It's like a jazz song on a Foo Fighters album, so, anyway, we named this after that and this is just Wildflower Honey from Virginia.

(mead pouring) Can I get you to swirl that?

>>Yeah, sure.

>>And smell it, and you're gonna get some really wonderful aromas that are coming from the barrel, coming from the honey.

>>Wow, that has an amazing aroma.

>>Yeah, thank you, yeah.

>>And it doesn't overpower the palette with sugar, which a lot of people probably would assume when they know it's honey wine.

So, we have some fruit meads here.

>>Yes.

>>And I can't wait.

>>We have a couple of them, so, with what we do here, we want to have ways for people to really understand the drink, because it's new to so many, so, I've experienced black currant meads fairly often in the mead world, and just looking at this color right away, it takes our guests to wine, because it has some of that color.

We intentionally made this not as sweet.

It's got some tartness, because it's black currant, as well, so, this is a fruit mead, which we call a melomel.

All fruit needs are melomels.

>>Melomels.

>>Melomels, wow.

>>So, you do the same thing you would with wine.

You get that aroma.

(wine swirling) >>Wow, it's kind of like an intro red wine.

>>Yeah, yep.

>>Nice and light.

>>It's light.

>>It has great flavor and body.

>>Yeah, it's tart.

It doesn't have the heavy tannins that you might find in a wine, which I like, but it's got its own thing.

It's a little different, so, the currant really does come through.

>>It's totally unexpected.

>>That's what we find.

Everybody who comes in is like, "I didn't know I liked mead."

>>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(Glenn laughing) I knew I liked mead, but I didn't have any idea.

There were so many meads.

>>It's just such a drink with so many possibilities.

>>So, shall we try the strawberry?

>>Yeah, let's go to the next one, so, I'll tell you a little story.

Virginia Tonight, I gave you a bit of the song connection.

Black Velvet is a song about Elvis Presley actually, so, Strawberry Swing, this is a song by Cold Play, so, I'm a musician, we like to have songs connected to all of our meads, and so, this one is strawberries and alfalfa honey.

Again, swirl it, get the aroma.

You'll get a ton of strawberry aroma here.

>>I got it right off the bat.

Wow, it's like a young, fresh strawberry.

>>Yes.

>>Wild strawberries.

>>And I find it very fun when folks come in and say, "I only drink dry reds," and then they leave with six bottles of this, because if you're thinking of this as wine.

You've gotta decategorize yourself, because it's technically a honey wine, but it's not like fruit wines.

It is different, yeah.

>>This is amazing.

>>Thank you.

>>So, how does a guy who's on the road all the time as a musician suddenly settle in to Williamsburg, Virginia and make mead?

>>Well, so much time on the road.

I'm efficient, I guess.

I don't like to waste time, and so, I was reading books all the time, sitting in airports, flying, driving on a bus, whatever, and one of the authors that I read wrote a book called "the Silver Hand," and in this book, like many of his other books, they're historical fiction, so, you've got these characters who are drinking mead a lot and I didn't know what mead was.

In fact, back in my late twenties, I hadn't had alcohol at all until then, so mead, beer, wine, it was all like a mystery to me, so, when I started exploring wine and beer, mead was just another one in the category and when I finally found some, it wasn't in a store, it was at a winery in Niagara Falls that was making it.

He did a tasting with us and I was just like, "This is really delicious.

Why is this not in the store?"

So, I think the idea was planted at that moment and it's been great.

We have, you'll see on many of our bottles, almost all of them, it says "savor what is good," so that's a bit of an ethos we stick to and when I write letters to our club members, I'm always saying what we're trying to do is create a drink that can help facilitate moments that you can savor what is good.

You don't know how much time you've got and you've gotta share those moments together.

>>Absolutely, well, here's to more moments.

>>Yes, thank you.

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