What makes honey wine a hit among millennials, wine enthusiasts

Honey wine may be the oldest fermented drink in the world, but it’s reinventing itself with bone dry sparklers and exotic flavors and reeling in millennials.

For the uninitiated, honey wine is simply fermented honey and water, inoculated with yeast.

“One of the main drivers is that younger drinkers are very open to exploring new beverage styles,” said Michael Zilber, the managing director of Point Reyes Station’s Heidrun Meadery. “They’ve grown up with a more mature craft beer industry that has been diversifying by playing with a wide variety of flavors and ingredients.”

As for winelovers across the board, they’ll likely find honey wine’s remake a surprise, explained Gordon Hull, the owner and meadmaker at Heidrun.

“Most wine lovers have tasted a honey wine that’s a cloyingly sweet concoction, likely flavored with fruits, herbs and spices, with medieval roots and Renaissance Faire popularity,” Hull said. “And, to be honest, much of the commercial honey wine produced today still conforms to that style.”

But for curious palates, there are tasty non-conformist honey wines in the area. In addition to Heidrun, there’s Sonoma’s Bee D’Vine, which has a tasting room in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Both offer a range of honey wines, including sparklers made from a second fermentation in the bottle - the traditional French method.

“Our champagne-style varietal of honey wines are crisp, clean, balanced and refreshing,” Hull said. “By producing dry honey wines, we reveal the extraordinary flavor compounds contained in the nectar of flowers. What’s more, every species of flower in the world has evolved in its own distinct nectar composition with its own unique aromatics.”

Fellow meadmaker Ayele Solomon, owner of Bee D’Vine (beedvine.com), said the most fascinating part is creating something new from something ancient. The first written records of honey wine date back 2,000 years, with an Ethiopian version called “t’ej.”

“Even in Normandy and Brittany, France, honey wine is made like it was 1,000 years ago,” Solomon said. “We (use) best standards in oenology and my art to craft fermented honey for the 21st century.”

Solomon was consulting on agricultural and conservation projects in Ethiopia in 2008 when he decided to reinvent honey wine. He was inspired by his father, who was growing grapes in a vineyard in Pleasanton, at the time. Solomon opened his tasting room last year.

“When people taste the wine, they really like it,” he said. “Numbers vary but we’re growing to several dozen tasters a day. We’re happy that so many Napa and Sonoma residents are stopping by when they’re in the city and at the Ferry Building.”

Acknowledging most people aren’t familiar with the Ethiopian mead t’ej, Solomon said he wrote the book “The Celebrated Story of Honey Wine” for the curious.

As for Hull’s entrée to honey wine, it began while crafting meads in his garage in Arcata, California.

“It always struck me that honey wines should be delicate, crisp and refreshing,” he said. “I developed a recipe that would result in a honey wine that is light and dry, and because I like bubbles, sparkling.

Hull welcomes people to taste at his farm where they can see his worker bees in action and taste his line-up of wines. He founded the meadery in 1997 in Arcata, before relocating to Point Reyes Station in 2011. Hull said while the enthusiasm of millennials is apparent, people in their 20s to 70s find their way to the tasting room.

“It’s the curious palates who come,” the meadmaker said. “Remarkably, many of our visitors don’t know what honey is composed of,” he said. “They know that honey comes from honey bees but aren’t aware that honey is simply nectar of flowers, harvested and processed by the honey bees.”

Wine writer Peg Melnik can be reached at peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com or 707-479-3880.