Aotearoa's World-leading Sparkling Honey Mead

Meet the maker behind Aotearoa’s world-leading sparkling honey mead.

How did a Kiwi dad-of-two dabbling in home brewing become a star of the international mead scene? The characteristically humble bloke in question reckons it all comes down to the quality – and simplicity – of his ingredients.

Lone Bee Mead, made in small batches by Northlander Oren Dalton, contains only four ingredients: top-quality clover and mānuka honey, water and yeast. With no additives, preservatives, sweeteners or additional flavourings, it’s light, clean and all about the authenticity of the honey. 

“I found great inspiration by the fact that I was leveraging off New Zealand honey and how good it is,” says Oren. “If we make the best honey in the world, then why can’t we make the best mead in the world?”

He’s been tinkering with home brewing for 14 years but says his interest in mead started even further back.

“I remember watching a movie about Vikings as a kid and they were drinking honey mead, which I thought was beer made from honey,” he says. “That exposure always stuck with me.” After starting home brewing and finding his beer “wasn’t tasting the best”, he had a lightbulb moment. “I just thought, okay, why don’t I try putting some honey in the fermenters?"

When Oren started producing mead, there weren’t any local meads for him to try – which inspired the brand’s name. “Our first commercial batch was 2017 and our next competitors came into the market late 2020, so during that period I was pretty much the only sparkling honey mead in the market – the lone bee, so to speak,” says Oren.  

He explains that in a hive, scout bees venture out on their own away from the hive, looking for new resources. When they find something the hive needs – say, a new nectar source or the perfect spot for a new home – they return to the hive and perform a ‘waggle dance’ to let the other bees know the location of the goods.

“That idea of the scouting bee who has gone out on their own, taken a leap of faith for the good of not just themselves but also the wider hive… that’s the story of the brand, really,” says Oren. 

Starting Lone Bee Mead may have taken a leap of faith, but Oren says mead could be a boon for the export industry in the coming years: we’ve got the ingredients and the skills, and it’s a booming international market. “I see it in the same light as New Zealand wine,” he explains. “If you think about the New Zealand wine industry back in the 1970s, it was only just starting – but look at it now. And what makes our wine so good is the quality of the grapes and the craftsmanship of the winemakers. I definitely think [Lone Bee Mead] is just the starting of a new category and if we can start exporting it, I can’t see why 20 or 30 years from now, we can’t be the world’s leading sparkling honey mead producers. We’ve got the honey, we’ve got the environment, we’ve got the wide-open spaces, we’ve got clean water…”

Oren also sees mead as a climate-forward industry – a factor that’s set only to grow in importance over the next decade. Having grown up on a farm up north (detail?), he has always been conscious of the important role that bees play in supporting environmental wellbeing, and just how threatened global bee populations are by climate change.

“I made the realisation that [Lone Bee Mead] wasn’t just about making a product, it was also that hopefully if I can do this, the demand for honey will increase, which will then mean more bees, trees, plants and flowers, ultimately leading to a healthier, happier planet,” he says.

Oren is delighted to see Aotearoa’s mead industry already further along than when he started, with five other commercial meaderies having opened since 2017. “Going to Beervana back in 2019, I was the sole sparkling honey mead exhibitor there amidst all these beers and ciders, and it was like, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here?’,” he remembers. “This year there’s going to be at least three of us here, which is awesome.”

For the moment, Oren is still working full-time in finance, with Lone Bee Mead as a passion project – but he hopes the balance might shift in the future. Since receiving an Instagram shout-out from Jamie Oliver in April, things have taken off rapidly for Lone Bee Mead, which supplies distributors in the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as New Zealand. 

More exciting things are in the pipeline, although Oren laughs when I dig for details. “I can’t really give away too much right now,” he says, “but things are looking good. I can say that hearing from Jamie was amazing and completely out of the blue – it just validated all the trial and error I’ve had with the recipe over the years! I messaged him to say thank you and we’ve been chatting ever since.”

Keen to support Lone Bee Mead? The tipple is available at a range of bottle shops and supermarkets nationwide – and if you can’t find it, ask the store owner; Oren is currently growing his stockist list – but you can also pick up a bottle online at lonebee.co.nz