Tiny winery makes big impact with special Magpie Mead
"It's the world's tiniest winery," says Steve "Magpie" Merr, gesturing toward a 28-by-14-foot building set on 87 acres on Route 41 in Bainbridge.
But then, Magpie himself is no giant.
"Just look at me," says the man who describes himself as "five-foot-five, on a good day ... with heels."
"I've never believed size is that important. It's quality, not quantity."
Because of the building's constraints, he can't produce more than 900 gallons of his award-winning Magpie Mead a year, even though he stores much of the product off site.
Each little batch of mead gets his full attention, he points out, arguing for the value of handmade products over mass production.
If he were making music, he'd be called a one-man band. In brewing his sulfite-free wines, he does everything from growing or hauling the fruit and harvesting honey to hawking the finished bottles at festivals far and wide.
Mead, as his Web site, www.magpiemead.com, explains, is made from the fermentation of honey instead of grapes. It's the oldest alcoholic drink known to man, with references found in the Koran and Bible. The favored drink of Viking warriors and British royalty alike, mead is flavored with fruit, herbs and spices, thought by some to give it medicinal -- and even magical -- properties.
It's popular around Renaissance Fairs, which is where Magpie tasted it first in 1989.
He describes the sampling procedure: "Hands behind your back, you're encouraged to slurp the mead as loudly as you can, which tends to make you inhale it," he says. "But it tasted so good, it didn't matter that I was choking on it."
He then tried to buy it, only to find himself unable. What he could procure was of lesser quality in his opinion, leading him to wonder if he hadn't uncovered an underserved niche market.
He delved into books about winemaking, cribbing his first recipe -- for Passover mead -- from an old Jewish cookbook.
He made it -- only to pronounce it undrinkable and fit only to be flushed down the toilet.
Try, try again.
Now he formulates his own recipes, which have to receive a governmental seal of approval before he can spring them on the oenophiles of the world. His recipe book holds 30 different concoctions; he sells seven of them now from his winery and online. He hasn't yet found local stores willing to take on his little-known products, although several wine stores in the Big Apple stock it, says Magpie, a Brooklyn native.
Were it not for the Internet, distribution would, in fact, be a near impossibility. When he's steeped in the wine-making process, he closes the winery to visitors. Keeping the environment sterile is imperative and impossible in such close quarters.
It's a fascinating work to watch, though, and different shiny stainless steel tanks and pieces of equipment play roles at various points in the process. That's after he has talked his bees into letting him take their honey, which might also provide plenty of entertainment.
He knows he needs to grow the business if he plans to earn a profit -- he already planted red raspberries and is considering a few grape vines for a whole new product line -- but for the meantime he's content to follow advice he says his dad gave him long ago: Do what you enjoy, and do it right.
Dad never said anything about doing it in huge quantities.