Brothers Drake Meadery & Bar

August 4 is National Mead Day and we were lucky enough to celebrate at Brothers Drake Meadery & Bar in CBus. Mead is wine made from honey and dates back to 7000 BC and is even mentioned in Ancient Greek Mythology.

At Brothers Drake, they are “hard core localists,” according to owner Oron Benary. And he is legit serious. Oron believes in sourcing everything local, including ingredients and resources (such as staff). The mead produced here is only sold in Franklin County (the county in which Columbus resides) and it cannot be shipped. That means if you want the product, you better get to Brothers Drake to get it.  When asked about growing the business (since the mead is not shipped anywhere or sold outside of the meadery in Franklin County), Oron said that building the same type of model in another city is the plan: set up a local meadery using local staff and local products and sell in the local market.

I totally dig this.

If you make the trek to Brothers Drake, you can take a tour and lean about mead and stay awhile at the bar, which happened by accident. The entry started out as a simple tasting room but Oron said people just wouldn’t leave. So, it became a bar.

We had to leave. Pittsburgh just missed us too much.