Okay, I can be a bit long-winded, but you asked for it buddy !
I was raised in a culture where home making is a part of life, so I born with a "purple foot" you might say. Without getting into much babble about childhood "experience", I'll fast forward to my adult life when I began making wine myself at home, ofcourse with more of a modern approach than old school natural fermentation practices I grew up learning from my elders.
I always enjoyed the idea of making wine to share with others. It was almost expected of me in a way, but to be completely honest with myself, I never had a real passion for it. Kind of like the kid who grows up and is pushed through medical school by his M.D. father...
There wasn't much room for real creativity in
traditional grape wine making, at least not for me. Bored me quite a bit.
A few years later, after a ride to go pickup a refractometer off Craigslist, the seller and I got into talking about our own fermented creations and he kept egging me on as to how homebrewing was the shit and that I should join the local homebrew club. Paid a visit to the next meeting, and about 8-10 extract recipes later, I went all grain. A few more batches after, full Blichmann Top Tier system and conicals in my garage...
The idea of such a vast range of styles and variations, and one-off ideas, etc.. just blew my mind and really let my relentness creativity go crazy. Nevermind the fact that most beer styles I was brewing were ready to drink within 4-8 weeks, and that you can basically brew year round... No more waiting until the fall to buy grapes, let the must sit and hurry and wait !
Fast forward a bit more, and there I was scouring the HBT forums through all hours of the night like I did every night. After seeing other post up about mead this and mead that, I finally stopped and asked myself, WTF IS MEAD !?
After some digging around about mead, its history, and how its made, I knew immediately that I had to make this. To me, it provided everything I loved about homebrewing creativity wise, all while allowing me to be in my comfort zone of winemaking that almost seemed pre-destined in a way. It's like that kid who was pushed through med school by his M.D. father landed a gig as a professional sports physician that travels with the team and hooks up with all the cheerleaders! Yeah, that good.
I fell in love immediately with mead. Making it, drinking it, and sometimes even sharing it
Before you know it, and even though homebrewing had a nice head start over my mead making, the meads I started entering brought in more medals, and coveted ones at that, than my homebrew. Not that my homebrew sucked at all, I just made ridiculously better mead.
I have some silver and golds from smaller regional homebrew competitions, as well as a gold at the 2013 Mazer Cup, and gold in the first round of this past NHC.
After receiving emails on two separate occasions from mead judge's asking if I was willing to share a recipe of mine, it clicked to me right then and there... I have what it takes to make some great mead. Competitions, medals, and scoresheets aside, I make mead for myself. And what others I shared my meads with thought of it meant more to me than all of the competition mumbo jumbo.
Some may say, yeah you can make mead or beer, but can you run a business!? My response would be, well yeah. I started my own business just over four years ago out of a one bedroom apartment that I have grown by 200% every year. Before that, I spent the previous 5 years basically running other people's businesses. A majority of my existing business actually entails a lot of work with wine imports and transportation. A nice set of credentials to have in this new venture.
Do I have what it takes to run a business, you bet your last lb of tupelo I do.
Do I have what it takes to make great mead that the general public and beer, wine, and mead enthusiasts will love and appreciate ? I believe and have been told by many that yes, I do.
But most importantly, do I have the passion to make a successful living running this meadery day in and day out? Well, I can barely stand sending out more than one text message in any given conversation on my phone, but I've sat here with a laptop burning through my thighs typing out this story of mine so that you can learn a bit (well okay, more than just a bit
more about me for you to better gauge whether you believe in me and my new venture.
I've posted a video on my Kickstarter campaign as well if you are interested. I gave a quick little walk through of the meadery so that everyone can see where we're at at the moment. This is a serious move for me. Not playing around the least bit when it comes to the success of this meadery. Planning on selling out of state off our online store shortly after opening as well. Looking to have 5 states setup right away, with more to follow.
Looking forward to being able to open the meadery doors to everyone and of course share a glass (or three) with you all. I hope to have left you with a better idea of my background.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/melovino/melovino-meadery
