Meaderies in Colorado

Colorado has one of the deepest mead scenes in the United States, and it is unusually spread out. Fourteen meaderies operate across thirteen different towns, so this is not a single-city cluster with a couple of outliers.

Where they are

The Front Range holds most of them. Ten of the fourteen sit along the I-25 corridor: Boulder, Littleton, Castle Rock, Aurora, Larkspur, Berthoud, Loveland, Severance and two in Colorado Springs. If you are in Denver, several are inside an hour.

The mountains have two. Idaho Springs and Leadville, both easy add-ons to a drive that was already going that way.

The Western Slope has two. Palisade, which is the centre of Colorado wine country, and Cortez down in the southwest corner.

What the numbers look like

The fourteen listings hold an average Google rating of 4.82 across 1,618 reviews between them, which is high even by tasting-room standards. Eleven publish opening hours and thirteen have their own website.

The most reviewed are Talon Wines at The Meadery in Palisade with 405, Honnibrook Craft Meadery in Castle Rock with 240, MeadKrieger in Loveland with 156 and Antelope Ridge in Colorado Springs with 143.

Redstone Meadery in Boulder is the name most people arrive already knowing. It is one of the older established meaderies in the country and a large part of why Colorado reads as a mead state at all.

Planning a visit

Two of them are the same company. Honnibrook runs both the Mead Cottage in Littleton and the Craft Meadery in Castle Rock, so if you are building a route, treat them as one stop unless you specifically want both.

Palisade is the one worth a special trip. It is Colorado wine country, so a meadery there sits among a lot of other tasting rooms and turns into a full day rather than a single visit.

Check hours before driving. Three of the fourteen publish no hours at all, and several of the smaller ones open only Thursday through Sunday. Every listing below carries a phone number.

Why Colorado specifically

Honest answer: nobody has fully explained it. Colorado combines an established craft drinks culture, a wine region on the Western Slope with the licensing and infrastructure already in place, and a couple of nationally known meaderies that have been operating long enough to make the state visible. Whether that is cause or coincidence is a guess, so treat it as one.