By Tania Phillips
From interstate truck driver to meadery owner with a little bit of help from the Covid-19 lockdown – Matt Anderson is enjoying his change of lifestyle, creating mead and selling it at markets and festivals across Queensland including one of his favourites – CelticFest 30 September to 1 October in Warwick.
The man behind the fast-growing Valknut Meadery says his new job, making wine from honey, doesn’t feel like work and his commute down the yard at his Crows Nest property is certainly shorter than it used to be.
Available at markets and festivals, the Valknut Mead has been building a reputation pretty quickly in its 18 months of operation and Matt is looking forward to taking the business to the next level.
Not bad for a venture which had its beginnings on a holiday and was developed on the road.
“About 10 years ago the missus and I went down to Tasmania on a holiday and we found some mead down there that we really loved, I was like righto I can certainly get into this,” Matt explained.
“We came back home and couldn’t find any local stuff that I liked and I thought righto I’ll be making it myself.
“I started doing little five litre batches and they grew and grew, all my mates kept drinking it and someone said – why don’t you do this for a job, get out of trucks. And I thought, that’s a great idea so that’s what I did and now it’s my full time job.
“It’s funny I built the meadery on our property, we’ve got a few acres. It’s weird getting up in the morning, sometimes I’ll say to the missus right I’m going to work, she says what? Because it doesn’t feel like a job. Even though I’m working pretty much five days a week in the Meadery, it still doesn’t feel like a job. It’s just stuff I’m doing which I like and I’m getting paid for it.”
Matt had been an interstate truck driver for 13 years before swapping to making his mead full time.
“The biggest trucks you could imagine – I was pulling them,” he laughed.
“I didn’t have any background in alcohol making, not at all. At high school and just after high school I did a bit of hospitality but nothing really serious. But then when I was truck driving, obviously I had a lot of time to think on the road, that’s where a lot of my plans and ideas came up for the business.”
Based out at Crows Nest just north of Toowoomba, Matt tries to keep everything he sources for his mead as local as possible.
There is no cellar door for the meadery, relying on local markets and festivals as well as a lot of online business.
He must be doing something right though, because last year’s Celtic Fest was the biggest market he had done to that point and he sold out early on the first day.
Mind you the drink certainly suits the festival.
“Mead is a very traditional wedding drink that’s where the word honeymoon comes from,” Matt explained.
“People like different stuff and mead is about the most unique drink out there.”
So where do all the ideas come from for the mead?
“I’ve never gone off another recipe – ever since the first recipe I just made it myself,” he chuckled.
“Even today some of these batches that I do which are 300 or 600 litres, I just wing it. I have a good idea of how the science of it all works, so I just make it and it turns out good. I do record all my recipes of course, but I write them in code as well so if someone did find them, they wouldn’t even know what they were looking at.
“All of our honey – 100 per cent, is all sourced in an area of about 35km from Crows Nest. I’ve got about six beekeepers who I always keep working with, so I’ve always got a good supply coming in. Even our fruits, I can’t say 100 per cent anymore because one of our meads has coconut in it, there are no coconut trees around here but everything else, well most of it, comes from this region as well. I am always looking at what’s fruiting in the area and I’ll be like – righto I’ll see if I can make a mead out of that.
“It’s good fun and it’s a good way to support the local businesses as well. We really promote them, a lot of the small farms – it’s so much better going directly through them or buying from the markets. You’re cutting out the middleman and putting more money in the farmers pocket.”
All of his mead comes in a 500ml glass clear bottle – for a very good reason.
“They’ve got to be clear because all of our meads, the colour of them – once you see them, you’ll be like ‘oh wow they look amazing’,” Matt enthused.
“I’ve got to use clear so you can actually see the meads. The labels themselves, there’s a mob in Toowoomba who do all the label designs for us, they’re amazing and they come up with some pretty cool ideas.
“One of my main focuses from the start when I was creating the business was to keep it as local as possible.”
While Matt has been honing his craft for the past 10 years, the business itself has been in operation for about a year and a half.
“The only issue we’ve had with our business is trying to keep up. We haven’t even started looking into wholesalers yet. When I start doing that I might have to double the volume again but I don’t want to give myself too much work,” he joked.
“It’s been very smooth sailing – touchwood. The variety of people who are interested in our mead is very diverse. Anyone who is anyone will buy it, there’s no specific type of people that we target. It is a very different drink. I’d say it’s between a wine and a port but a port is fortified and mead is not, it’s a natural fermentation. Some people will say, oh I only drink bourbon. Well okay I’ve got a mead that’s aged with American Oak which is somewhat similar to a bourbon. Nine times out of 10 they will go for that. Now and again we will have a dry one so people that only like dry wines turn to that one. We’ve got chilli meads, fruit, we try to keep different flavours, that way there’s something for everyone.”
Matt said he is bringing a variety of meads to this year’s festival in Warwick.
“There’ll be four, maybe five different flavours there including our brand new one, it’s called the ‘blueberry pancake’. It’s a good one. We’ve used organic blueberries down the road from us, we then blended that with maple syrup which of course comes from Canada so that’s one thing we couldn’t do locally. But then we’ve used vanilla and cinnamon blended with it as well. It’s very soft, very nice – it’s beautiful.”
He loves to be innovative and admits he did a lot of daydreaming on the road.
“But everything I was daydreaming of back then, it’s all different now because of the way it’s grown, I didn’t realise it was going to grow this fast. I knew it was going to grow this big but I thought it would take at least five years, but we’re at this stage in 12 months so it’s taken off,” he said.
“The CelticFest was our first big festival. We took something like 10 times more than what we do to a normal farmers market and we sold out by 10.30am in the morning. So, this year we’re taking a lot more.
“I went and bought myself a van, so I can load up a lot more for these types of trips so we should be well and truly prepared and have more than enough for everyone.”
