This brand’s ‘hard honey’ is bringing mead into the 21st century

When he was a teenager, Collin McKenna’s interest in changing the food system led him to move from Colorado to Hawaii for high school. It was on that school’s regenerative farm that the now 30-year-old has entrepreneur discovered mead—the sweet, fermented honey beverage often referred to as “honey wine.” His first taste of alcohol was mead made by Hawaiian locals.

With his 10-month-old brand LIXIR—a sparkling ready-to-drink mead brand he’s billing as “hard honey”—McKenna wants to make the ancient beverage accessible while turning LIXIR into just the second Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) alcoholic beverage brand. “So many different cultures made different variations of it. But we wanted to reimagine mead for a modern consumer,” McKenna says.

Making Mead Accessible

One of McKenna’s first moves when starting Lixir was trademarking the term “hard honey,” papering over the knowledge gap around mead—one of the world’s oldest alcoholic beverages, but whose popularity fell as beer and wine became easier to produce on industrial scale. But mead has been having a resurgence. Fortune Business Insights data reveals that the mead market was about $533.3 million in 2023, and is projected to nearly triple by 2032. 

“There’s a lot of education behind trying to explain mead and where it comes from,” McKenna says. “As soon as we came up with the idea of hard honey, people were like, ‘I get it.’”

With a concept in mind, in 2021, McKenna approached Frank Golbeck, founder of Oceanside, California’s Golden Coast Mead, to begin developing the formula for his hard honey. Since 2010, Golbeck has been focused on modern mead with a regenerative approach. He saw McKenna’s ethos and vision, and although his small factory had limited space, was willing to begin a partnership. 

Golbeck says mead represents “the synthesis of ecology, creativity and history coming together. Honey is this expensive product that is hard to make. Then to turn it into an alcohol that is similarly hard to make—and to do it well, consistently—has escaped people for generations.”

The pair ultimately created a proprietary process for formulating a 5% ABV modern mead that’s less sweet and, unlike the traditional drink, slightly carbonated. LIXIR comes in three varieties: Pear Lime, Cherry Grapefruit, and Mango Orange. “There are so many different honey options—flowers and places where they forage—and they can make such different mead,” McKenna says. “We went through countless renditions of just trying to make the base. It was at least a yearlong process.” 

Since April, Lixir has debuted at Total Wine & More in its SoCal region as well as Jimbo’s natural grocery stores in San Diego, among several other small retailers and upscale restaurants and hotels. This Spring, it will also begin rolling out in Mother’s Market stores in Southern California regions. McKenna has raised more than $650,000 in funding, about half of its current goal amid a crowdfunding round. Jack Sinclair, CEO of Sprouts Farmers Market, is an advisor and investor in Lixir.

Lixir’s regenerative approach

Lixir’s branding helps make mead something a casual shopper might buy, but McKenna still has to solve for how to explain to buyers that their purchase is funding responsible farming. A survey out of Purdue University’s Department of Agriculture found that more than 70% of U.S. consumers are slightly or not at all familiar with the term “regenerative agriculture.”

McKenna and Golbeck knew that their regenerative goals would rely on sourcing, so they decided to make Lixir with honey sourced from a Brazilian farm in the Atlantic Rainforest that pulls double duty as a nature and bee preserve. McKenna says Lixir is already a regenerative organic product, but has yet to receive certification from the Regenerative Organic Alliance—something no bee farm or honey brand has managed to achieve.

McKenna and Golbeck say that’s because the ROA requires a three-mile forage radius to certify farms, something the founders view as impractical because bees fly far and wide. They have been working with groups like the Regenerative Apiculture Working Group, which focuses on promoting a regenerative honey ecosystem, to make changes to the requirements. “It’s so complicated,” McKenna says adds. “We’ve been chipping away for 10 years.”

Though the ROA has certified a handful of beverage brands—among them Harmless Harvest coconut water and Guayaki yerba mate—LIXIR would become just the second alcoholic beverage brand with ROC status (outdoor lifestyle brand Patagonia’s beer and wine operation has received the certification). McKenna is hopeful ROC status could come within the next five years. “We want to educate people in the best way possible by creating a product that everybody can enjoy and have fun with,” McKenna says. “We want to be the brand behind the movement.”

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