Home › Guides
Guides
Plain answers about meaderies and what to expect from one.
A meadery is a place that makes mead, which is wine made from honey. Here is what that means in practice, and what you will find if you walk into one.
A meadery ferments honey and a winery ferments grapes. In law and licensing they are often the same thing, which is why the two names get mixed together.
Mead is wine. It ferments from honey rather than grain, and federal law regulates it under the wine rules, even when it is poured in a taproom that feels like a brewery.
What a mead tasting actually involves: flights, prices, how to order, whether you can tour the production side, and what to check before you drive out.
Melomel, metheglin, cyser, braggot. The words on a meadery tasting list all mean the same thing: mead, plus whatever went in alongside the honey.
No opinions, just the numbers. The highest rated, busiest and most searched for meaderies in the directory, with the method stated so you can judge it yourself.
What it actually takes to open a meadery in the United States: how mead is licensed, what the federal process looks like, and what the existing 310 meaderies show about where the room is.
310 trading across 49 states, verified September 19, 2026, with the permanently closed ones taken out. Why every published figure disagrees, and how this one is counted.