The couple had been fermenting their plan for a long time ahead of the company’s 2016 launch. “A friend was visiting from England and we took her to the Hill of Tara,” Kate recalls. “We stood on the point of the great Mead Hall and I thought, this is a sign. We started off making a home brew to work out what we liked and didn’t like. We talked to lots of people from the mead-making community, many in the USA.
“You can make it very sweet but our meads are off dry, rather than dry,” Kate says. “When mead was made a very long time ago, honey was precious, particularly in Ireland. Honey bees don’t like foraging in the rain – and of course we have plenty of that in Ireland – so they wouldn’t have used a lot of it in mead back then. Therefore we think it would have been off dry. Berry mead would have been commonplace also, we believe.
“They gave us advice on labelling, marketing and sales, mentoring us through the difficult startup stages,” Kate says. “A huge part of that was the network of other Cork food and drink suppliers who were so welcoming and supportive at all stages and still today. We cheer each other on, we boost each other up and we buy each other's products too.
“All sorts of people like it – the craft beer people are always interested in trying a new drink. Then there are those who really want to support local as well as the people who are into supporting biodiversity and bees,” Kate says.