Beekeper Martin Jackson was poised to open the Hunter Valley's first honey and mead cellar door at Broke when disaster struck.
The varroa mite was running rampant through beehives and he, like so many other beekeepers around the state, had no option but to eradicate his hives. All 65 of them.
Jackson founded Honey Wines Australia three years ago as an online cellar door selling mead, which he refers to as honey wine.
"All my hives were destroyed back in October. They didn't actually have the mite but they were within 10 kilometres of somewhere that did," he said.
"I fully support the need to destroy them - a lot of people protest against it. We don't want those mites here. It's something that is necessary but still a shame."
Undeterred, Jackson last year relocated from Blackalls Park to Broke and has just opened Honey Wines Australia's cellar door, a physical space where visitors can sample his unique mead flavours and explore a range of honey products including creamed honey, vanilla honey and even chocolate honey.
Jackson has nine mead flavours on offer: Plain Mead (Hunter Valley); Peach and Passionfruit; Turkish Delight; Lemon and Ginger; Maple Syrup; Watermelon; Vanilla; Lemon and Lime; and Chai.
"A lot of trial and error goes into working on different flavours," he told Food & Wine.
"Some are straight forward, like lemon and ginger, but not many people in the world are doing a watermelon mead, I know that."
Meaderies themselves are rare. Jackson says there are "about 30" in Australia and four in NSW. Most are online only and not many (if any) sell mead in 750ml bottles as he does.
He started beekeeping in 2011 when Flows Hives hit the market, became "addicted" to it, and went on to run beginner beekeeping classes.
"I enjoyed that, it was fun and rewarding for me, and then I decided to start a business around mead, because there's not many around," he said.
"A friend in America got me into mead. He was going to make mead the ancient way, without any proper gear, using a bucket with a cloth over it, and he gave me the recipe to try.
"The first batch I did was horrible - the oxygen probably got to it and turned it into vinegar. But I tried again with a home brew kit and this second batch was pretty good. It just kept going from there."
Jackson has Honey Wines Australia mead bottled and ready to sell; thousands of bottles made from hundreds of kilograms of honey sourced from his own hives.
"I've still got about 50 kilograms of my own honey left but that's not enough to do a batch of mead, so I'm selling that by the jar," he explained.
"Next time I make a batch of mead I will need to buy some honey. I've got someone lined up who has hives at Cooranbong, just outside the quarantine zone, so hopefully he can stay out of the zone as long as possible.
"I think Hunter region honey tastes better than some of the other honeys I've tried, so I want to keep it local if possible."
Jackson describes his mead as "sweet but not as syrupy as a dessert wine. The texture is more like a wine and the alcohol level is about 12 per cent".
"I called the business Honey Wines Australia instead of Mead Australia because I didn't want to be explaining what it was every five minutes," he said, laughing.
"Most people associate mead with Vikings but they are only relatively modern, they were around about 1000 years ago, and mead is actually the oldest fermented drink in existence. It can be traced back to about 7000 BC in ancient China.
"I stock Viking-inspired drinking horns and I can't keep up with demand around Christmas time."
Broke remains a varroa mite-free zone at present but the virus remains a threat.
"The government has been compensating people for the hives lost, and technically I could use that money to start some hives in Broke, but I don't want to do that and then two months later have to eradicate them," Jackson said.
"I am going to wait until it's all blown over, one way or another."
Honey Wines Australia Meadery's tasting room is open Friday to Sunday. To book, or purchase items online, go to honeywinesaustralia.com.au
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