Come and enjoy a selection of different meads and cocktails using mead, a real eye opener.
Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery was licensed as British Columbia’s first Meadery in 2003. The combination of Bob Liptrot’s 43 years of beekeeping experience and over 25 years of mead making experience bring a unique and educational culinary experience to each visitor to our tasting room. Our award...
[read more] Come and enjoy a selection of different meads and cocktails using mead, a real eye opener.
Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery was licensed as British Columbia’s first Meadery in 2003. The combination of Bob Liptrot’s 43 years of beekeeping experience and over 25 years of mead making experience bring a unique and educational culinary experience to each visitor to our tasting room. Our award winning Meads (honey wines) reflect harmony and balance by blending varietal honeys and berries from our local region.
Mead (Honey Wine) is the oldest art of fermentation. Consumed by all, from kings to peasants, mead has gained a reputation as a giver of life, wisdom, courage and strength down through the ages.
Tugwell Creek Honey Farm & Meadery
About Us
Bob Liptrot -Meadmaker
Bob became interested in bees at the age of 6. He helped a neighbor in East Vancouver keep bees and was rewarded with pieces of fresh honeycomb. Bees became his lifelong passion and along with big wall climbs, incredible mountaineering feats, and several years with Outward Bound, he always found a way to keep bees. He earned a masters degree in Entomology and has been experimenting with making mead for over 30 years. There really is no Mead Making School and although some of the principles of winemaking do apply, mead is a different animal!
Dana LeComte went to Ryerson University in Toronto with dreams of being a fashion buyer or having her own business one day. After several years in the fashion industry she became disenfranchised and went to work for Mountain Equipment Coop in Vancouver. After meeting Bob there he became her outdoor guru and she became the marketer that would make his dream of owning a honey farm and meadery a reality. Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery was the first Meadery in Western Canada.
About Mead
Mead has a long history. So long, many say, that it may well be the oldest recorded fermented beverage. There are indications that the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Scandinavians, Assyrian, Incas and Aztec used mead, both in festivals and as a religious drink.
Oddly, it seems to have pervaded many, if not most, cultures, at some point in time. You can find it in the writings of Greek philosophers and the stories of their gods. Mead figures prominently in the tales of Scandinavia and the Vikings. You can find mead in the histories of England (Queen Elizabeth I loved it!), France, Greece, South America, Africa, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Germany and Australia.
Honey, and by association, mead, have been attributed with such powers as that of an aphrodisiac, and it has been said in times gone by that it imbues the drinker with attributes such as life, wisdom, courage and strength.
The Celtic peoples of the British Isles were reputed to have made mead with honey and the sap of a hazel tree. Some Christian saints (probably the Irish ones!) were reputedly fond of a 'wee drop o mead' bedtimes. It is purported that St. Brigitte turned water into mead at the court of the King of Leinster.
Mead was popular until the 18th century, when sugar was developed. As the popularity rose and the price fell, sugar became the sweetener of choice and mead fell out of favour.
