Meet Michael Fields of Retro Meadery

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Fields.

Hi Michael, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today. 
During the Covid pandemic, three friends got together to make a beer kit and a mead kit. The mead kit was simple enough to make but didn’t come out the way we wanted it to. So together, we purchased a 5-gallon bucket of Raspberry Honey (which is a rare type of honey), and we played around with several different recipes. Our friends and family really enjoyed it, so we decided to test our meads with sample groups. One of the big indicators that we could make this hobby into a business was when a taster came to us at a sample event and said, “I have had commercial meads before and never liked them, I came here because my friend invited me, but after tasting your meads I would like to invest in your business.” 

We were dreaming big, thinking of opening a tasting room and a meadery right away, but doing so in a pandemic and then during inflation is very hard for a start-up business. So, we decided to start small and grow. We purchased a 12 ft x 32 ft metal building and placed it on one of the business owner’s property. We had to get the location zoned and inspected so that we could start producing our meads. We started producing our meads in September of 2022, with our first sales in November 2022. We are now the first meadery on the east coast of North Carolina. 

Why Retro? Well, we love the 80s and 90s, classic movies, and old-school games. Mead is also the oldest fermented beverage known. What is more Retro than that? 

Now we are located in 12 retail locations from Southport, NC; Leland, NC; Wilmington, NC; Surf City, NC; Jacksonville, NC; and Hickory, NC. We can ship our meads directly to our customers through our website, and we attend local festivals and events and have a booth at the Seaglass Monthly Market in Castle Hayne, NC. 

Something that we are finding on the eastern side of NC is that mead is not largely known by customers that we meet, but once they try our product, they are very surprised, and they become new to mead lovers. 

We recently purchased an old school bus in which we set up for doing events. With four taps out the side of the bus, we are able to pour by the glass or provide samples at these events, weddings, festivals, and more. 

Our long-term goal is to open a tasting room that will be family-friendly, with live entertainment and a retro arcade with class stand-up cabinets, pinball, NES, Sega, Atari, and so on. We hope to reach this goal in the next year or two. 

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Mead is growing in popularity, but still, there are a lot of people who have never heard of mead. When we educate a customer that mead is honey-wine the initial thought is that mead must be very sweet. That is not the case. Just like wine, mead can range from dry to sweet. One of our most popular dry meads is our Knights of The Elderberry (a double-infused elderberry mead), and one of our most popular sweet meads is our Cinnapede (made with apple juice, wildflower honey, and Cinnamon). So, we love to educate the customers and provide samples showing the diversity of our meads. 

As you know, we’re big fans of Retro Meadery LLC. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about the brand?
We are the first meadery on the southern east coast of North Carolina. We are a small production facility, and we pride ourselves on staying as eco-friendly as possible. We use recycled bottles as much as possible, and our facility is solar-powered. We also believe our Retro/nostalgia theme for our labels is unique and eye-catching that sometimes we just have customers by a bottle because of the label. Our local label designer (Daniel Chaffin), who is a friend of one of the owners, does an awesome job at bringing our idea for our labels to life. 

We have a small production facility in a 12x32ft building with five 300-liter fermentation tanks. We fermented our meads in four tanks while leaving the fifth open for racking and aging our meads. For our limited small batches, we produce 15 gallons in three 5-gallon carboys. Our limited batches are Bob Rasberry, The Viking Breakfast Club (our coffee mead), and our Black Cherry Mead. 

Currently, our most popular is our Cyser, Cinnapede (Word play on the Atari game Centipede), which is made with wildflower honey, apple juice, and cinnamon sticks. We are very proud of our Knights of The Elderberry Mead as we collaborated with another Burgaw business, Elderberry Tribe to create this awesome elderberry mead. Our label for this one is a crowd favorite. “Knights of the Elderberry” is in reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Quote from the movie: “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!”. Also, our Bob Rassberry, made with raspberry honey and fresh raspberries, is fantastic that even your happy little taste buds will enjoy it. 

Our plan in the near future is to open a tasting room for our customers so they can enjoy our mead locally. Even though we are only a production facility, we still have customers call or message us to ask when our (non-existent) tasting room is open. Our vision is to have a tasting room with live entertainment, retro movie nights, and a classic arcade. We want the community to have a place where they can bring the kids and enjoy some of the past classics. 

Retromeadery.com is the best place to get our mead shipped directly to you. Also on our website is a list of all the local shops where meads are carried. We are in most of the major Wilmington, NC area, bottle shops, including Southport and Leland areas. We try to attend local festivals, and we have a market once a month in Castle Hayne called “Seaglass Monthly Market,” where we are there every third weekend (Friday-Sunday) of each month and offer tastings of our current meads. We are very active on social media, including Facebook and Instagram, and we post where and when we will be! 

What makes you happy?
Seeing customers that have never tried mead before because new to mead lovers. Also, we get really excited when we have a customer who has tried mead before, didn’t care for it, tried ours, and ended up purchasing a bottle or two. 

Pricing:

• Cinnapede $25 for 750ml
• Pac-Gria $25 for 750 ml
• Knights of The Elderberry $28 for 750ml
• Bob Rassberry $35 for 750ml
• Saved By The Blueberry $25 for 750ml

Contact Info:

• Website: retromeadery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/retromeadery/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RetroMeaderyLLC/

Image Credits
Retro Meadery