PRAIRIE BEE SERVING UP ‘SASKATCHEWAN IN A CUP’
Popular honey wine a tasty tribute to farm family’s agricultural roots
Mead is the perfect drink for sipping around the fire at Christmas.
It’s relatively new to Saskatchewan — only a handful of businesses make the fermented honey wine — but more promise to spring up as the province’s cottage wine and microdistillery industry keeps growing.
In 2016, the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority announced forward-thinking changes aimed at these industries. The new regulations were intended to make it easier to get started as a craft alcohol producer in Saskatchewan by providing a competitive markup structure, while reducing red tape and streamlining marketplace access.
The family-owned Prairie Bee Meadery is the province’s first craft meadery and takes pride in hand-crafting small batches using the best clover, alfalfa and wildflower honey available from the family’s bees.
Crystal Milburn owns Prairie Bee with her husband Girard and her parents Vicki and Dennis. The honey and much of the fruit comes from the family’s chemicaland pesticide-free orchards, called Grandpa’s Garden, west of Moose Jaw.
Crystal said it’s important to honour the craft of mead making, along with the family’s agricultural roots.
“Because we’re working with honey, we’ve got a real reliance on our bees and our origins in farming and growing fruit. We really want to keep it local. We want it to be something that’s made here: Saskatchewan in a cup.”
Saskatchewan-grown fruits (like sour cherry, haskap, raspberry and strawberry) are added to the wines before fermentation to create a variety of flavour profiles. The meads’ flavour profiles range from sweet or dry, to light or bold. They source fruit from elsewhere in Canada when necessary — such as B.C. cranberries for Christmas mead.
Crystal’s parents began making “really good” mead at home with all the honey from their bees, and her mom soon decided opening a cottage winery was the way to go. Crystal, Girard and their four children moved from Alberta to the farm to run the business.
They brought in Dominic Rivard, an internationally renowned fruit wine specialist, to help them develop the mead recipes, and launched Prairie Bee
Meadery in 2016.
The goal is to keep Prairie
Bee in the family. That means they’ll stay small enough that the current family members can maintain the business without requiring a lot of outside help.
“My parents feel strongly that building this business is a legacy for us and for our children,” says Crystal.
Visit Prairie Bee Meadery’s tasting room in Moose Jaw at 23B Main Street North or the website( prairiebeemeadery.ca) to order online, or for a list of other Saskatchewan retail locations.
Group tours and wine tastings at the farm and orchard can also be arranged during the summer and fall.
Jenn Sharp is a freelance writer in Saskatoon. Her first book,
Flat Out Delicious: Your Guide to Saskatchewan’s Food Artisans, will be published by Touchwood Editions in April. Follow her on Twitter @Jennksharp, on Instagram @flatoutfoodsk, and on Facebook.