All abuzz about mead

Mead was the drink of choice for kings, conquerors and knights — and now me! I can now get my very own honey wine from Alberta’s first meadery in Okotoks, about 25 kilometres south of Calgary limits.

It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon for a drive with Steph and Torsten, who were visiting from Edmonton. We took Torsten’s zoom-zoom car and got to the Chinook Honey Company in no time.

We walked into a tidy country store with not only honey (duh), but also shelves of beeswax candles, soaps, lotions, ointments, teas and ice cream — all made from what Art and Cherie Andrews’ bees produce.

And you can see the bees! There’s an observation hive behind glass so you can peer at the bees doing their thing. They don’t buzz so much as hum together it seems.

Cherie gave us the low-down on the bees, what they do and how they do it in the interpretative area, where they host school groups and such. It was pretty fun sitting there being a kid again.

She pointed out how clean the bees keep their hive, as we watched a worker bee drag the body of a dead bee out of the observation hive. Wowza.

“How did you become a beekeeper?” asked Torsten. (No, he didn’t raise his hand. It’s OK because he’s like seven feet tall.)

Turns out Art started beekeeping 13 years ago as a relaxing hobby to pollinate their organic garden; one hive turned into almost 300 and a full-time job.

Then this May — after seven years of tinkering — they launched the Chinook Arch Meadery, turning honey, yeast and water into mead, the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man.

Cherie walked us over to the cute little bar area and poured us samples of the King Arthur’s Dry Mead. It smelled um, funny — OK, I thought dirty socks and rubbing alcohol — but tasted pleasantly like Gewürztraminer.

Cherie suggested that the mead’s sweetness works well paired with hot and spicy food.

We also sampled the Bodacious Blackcurrant melomel, which is mead that contains fruit. That tasted very much like a sweet rosé wine. Cherie told us she likes to have it on hot summer days with some ice or club soda. (I think she said club soda; it might’ve been Steph that suggested it.)

We enthusiastically bought a couple of bottles ($20) each to take home because how often do you get the chance to have mead? They’ve actually already sold out of a third mead, the Buckaroo Buckwheat.

It was a sweet night as we cracked open a bottle of the mead after dinner — it’s excellent extremely cold — and chowed down on some honey and Saskatoon berry ice cream ($8/pint) that had been taunting us from the Chinook Honey store’s freezer.

The mead is so far only available from the Okotoks store, but the visit with Art and Cherie (and some bees) is worth the trip.

Chinook Honey Company, southwest corner of Highway 7 and 16th Street West, Okotoks, Alberta, (403) 995-0830. Map and more information here.