“It’s so relaxing,” I hear a patron say.  We’re inside the tasting room at Wilderbee Farm, overlooking an orchard of budding fruit trees, each with a glass of mead in hand.

The Mead Werks tasting room has cozy wood accents, making it feel like a mountain lodge inside a farmhouse. I can spy the honey boxes across the lawn, where the bees are working hard. They’re the only ones here who don’t seem at ease.

Mead is having a bit of a moment. The lightly sweet wine-like drink has been buoyed by growing interest in niche craft beverages, with most makers leaning into its historic renaissance faire associations: Tukwila’s Oppegaard Meadery is all about the Viking vibe, while and Mr. B’s Meadery in Fremont embraces the drink’s whimsical reputation as magical alchemy.  At Wilderbee, a few miles west from downtown Port Townsend, mead is the star of something more earthy.

Casey and Eric Reeter set out to create a place that felt calm and laid back—eventually. Their dream was to build a rural escape in retirement, inspired by farms in North Bend and Monroe they used as quick respites from their West Seattle life. But when they found the perfect 12-acre spot earlier than expected, they moved to Port Townsend in 2007.

Today the acreage is a working farm, complete with certified organic U-pick flower fields and pumpkin patch, and a herd of rare British Soay sheep known for their small size. In fall, their fine wool is hand-plucked. Visitors can easily fill half a day between feeding the animals, working in the ceramics studio, wandering nature trails crisscrossing the property, and sipping mead.

Owning and working the 12 acres is a far cry from retirement, but “it doesn’t feel like work,” Casey says before setting off to plant flower seeds in the greenhouse. In summer, dahlias, zinnias, and sunflowers sprout into a rainbow of U-pick options, the $9 DIY bouquets of 25 stems each putting even Pike Place Market’s best to shame.

The addition of a meadery in 2019 to make use of Wilderbee’s flower fields just made sense. The craft beverage industry was skyrocketing—there are three cideries within 10 miles of Wilderbee—and the Reeters felt their flowers could serve double duty. They had been beekeepers for years and knew honey. At first, their pantry became a micro meadery for home brewing experiments. They took a mead course at Ballard’s National Nordic Museum, then another at UC Davis. Eventually they went commercial.

The tasting room boasts a menu of 14 meads alongside table games and local art. String lights hang from wooden rafters just below a tin roof, and at first glance this could be an unbuttoned wine tasting room or woodsy brewery. But here the bees always get top billing; the bar’s honeycomb tilework matches the tasting room’s brass bee-shaped door knocker.

Meads arrive in four-ounce pours, three-variety flights, or whole bottles. Casey’s dream flight: First, the Larryberry sparkling blueberry mead named after her dad, Larry. The fizzy, cherry red pour is crisp and fruity, nothing like my expectations of straight honey or something like kombucha. Next, the Nectarious After Dark Bourbon, which Casey calls a sweet mead. “We put it in bourbon barrels for years—anywhere from three to five years—and it has all these caramelly toasted marshmallow notes,” she says.

And finally, a seasonal release; in spring it’s a mango-infused dry variety, but the menu constantly incorporates bold flavors like apples, chai, and even smoked peppers. Spiced mead served warm will debut on the autumn equinox. 

Casey calls her husband and herself “makers” above all. The ceramics studio hosts workshops in the summer and her father sells woodcrafts like display-ready charcuterie boards and whimsical birdhouses in the gift shop. They sit on shelves along with copper-distilled lavender essential oils and balms crafted from the farm’s yield.

So maybe the owners themselves are as busy as the bees outside. For everyone else, Wilderbee serves the farm’s mission, at least as Casey puts it: “to have people come here and just relax and escape the stress of their world and leave happy.”