Valkyrie's Kiss Mead is gaining popularity as a standout in the Texas mead industry, offering unique flavors and quality craftsmanship.
There's an ancient alchemy underway in New Braunfels . Tucked into the corner of a stretch of industrial buildings along Texas 46 , Isaac Pruna is transforming honey into gold. And as owner of the fledgling 8-month-old Valkyrie's Kiss Mead, the New Braunfels native and 10-year Army veteran is already winning both loyal fans and awards for his intoxicating elixirs.
Not bad for a guy who brewed his first batch of mead just a few years back. 'I got out of the military about three years ago now. And so, getting out, I just realized I loved enjoying the culture of alcohol,' Pruna said. 'When I got to travel all throughout Europe and different parts of the world, I realized that there's one common thing between each culture. People really love to celebrate and drink alcohol, you know. And so coming back home, I was just fascinated with how I could bring something really old and make it modern and make it appeal to as many people as I can.' Pruna is an enthusiastic champion of mead, an ancient form of alcohol made by fermenting honey with water and yeast. Pruna said mead's history predates wine production by two millennia, dating back to roughly 7,000 BCE — a claim supported by an archaeological record that's found pottery in northern China containing traces consistent with mead production. Valkyrie's Kiss's flagship traditional wildflower meads are available in sweet and dry versions. It also bottles several fruit-infused versions, which are, technically speaking, called melomel. In this year's TEXSOM Awards, an international beverage competition, Valkyrie's Kiss took a silver medal for its Blackberry Gold mead and a bronze medal for its cherry-flavored Cherry Nice to Mead You. WORTH A DRIVE: Top 10 New Braunfels Restaurants for 2024 It takes literal tons of honey to get to all that hardware. Valkyrie's Kiss bubbles through about seven 55-gallon barrels per quarter — more than 4,500 pounds of the stuff every three months. Pruna works exclusively with Texas-produced honey, primarily sourced from the apiaries Youngblood's Honey in Pearsall and Holdman Honey in Seguin. Keeping things local comes at a cost. Pruna said each barrel runs around $2,500 — a cost he could cut dramatically if he chose to use imported honey. But it's a price worth paying, he said. 'So, number one, Texans are very proud of the products that are made in Texas,' Pruna said. 'And another reason why I wanted to use Texas honey is because it's unique to to our area. When mead is made, if it's made with a different honey and it's made with different water, you're never going to get the same results even if you have the same recipe. It's going to be difficult to achieve the same type of complexities that each mead made in its own region has.' And it's not just about the true-to-Texas flavors for Pruna. In the world of alcohol production, mead, he said, is an environmentally friendly beverage. 'Compared to wine, beer and distilled products, for every one gallon that is consumed by the public, it usually takes about seven gallons of water to produce that one gallon of that product. With mead, whatever water we use is water that you're pretty much consuming. We have a very small amount of waste,' Pruna said. 'With the rising concern of water conservation, especially here in Central Texas, and even in Canyon Lake, and here in New Braunfels, Medina Lake is almost pretty much dried up. Same with Canyon Lake. That was one consideration I took into play when choosing this. Water conservation and then saving the bees, you know. Save the bees drink mead.' BUBBLING UP: Cool off this summer with the Top 10 canned ranch water cocktails and hard seltzers The Valkyrie's Kiss mission is personal to Pruna as well. He named the brand in honor of the Norse goddess Freyja, who is often associated with valkyries and their surrounding lore. 'She was charged to go down to the battlefield and bring those souls that fought valiantly in life and on the battlefield to Valhalla,' Pruna said. 'I chose the name Valkyrie's Kiss partly because of my service in the military and also an homage to the people that I've lost personally. So anytime I get to drink with friends and family, I can honor them and get to drink and be merry.' In some ways, Valkyrie's Kiss is on the path of most resistance. The U.S. alcohol market is expected to be worth about $318 billion this year, according to statista.com. Mead makes up a microscopic share of that, with a value clocked at roughly $540 million in 2023 as reported by Global Market Insights. Jeff Bezos wouldn't even notice a blip on his bank statement if he bought up the entire industry. Mead doesn't have much visibility in popular culture, either. You won't see any ads for it during the Super Bowl. Chances are pretty good you won't find any stocked at your favorite restaurant or bar. The customer base who are familiar with mead is comparatively tiny when looked at next to the millions of cool kids cracking open a White Claw. 'So I find the A-type customers right away. People who've gone to renaissance fairs, people who've tried to make it at their house. Those people are usually interested in trying something new, and they'll go for it,' Pruna said. 'There's not really a B customer developed yet. So we either have the A customer, or we have someone who tried it once before, or never tried it at all. Some people will say, 'Oh, well, yeah, my husband, my son, my brother, or my friend from college brewed it at their house. I tried it. It tastes horrible, and I've never had mead again.' So now we're dealing with the perception that mead is god awful.' But times and tastes, Pruna said, are changing. Mead is projected to hit a market value of $1.4 billion by 2032 according to fortunebusinessinsights.com. Pruna can envision a world where mead follows a path similar to the current popularity of hard ciders — once a niche segment relegated to granddad's rocking chair, but now available in bars across the country thanks to the rise of brands such as Austin Eastciders. Pruna cites Austin-based Meridian Hive, which makes a line of canned beverages it calls 'hard honey' as an example of a brand working to popularize honey-based drinks, although he sees a different path for Valkyrie's Kiss. CATCH THE BUZZ: Beekeeping on the rise in San Antonio 'For me, I'm not necessarily going for cans or kegs or any of that. I want to produce a very fine mead for people who want to try to get away from wines or certain beers or stuff like that,' Pruna said. 'In particular, we're jumping into a very new trend to age mead in bourbon and whiskey barrels, and also to work with distilleries for them to have our barrels that we age mead in so that they can age their whiskey.' For now, Valkyrie's Kiss doesn't have any advertising campaigns, but it has become a regular fixture at the New Braunfels Farmers Market and Pearl Farmers Market. Getting samples into the hands of potential customers, Pruna said, has been the most effective way to spread awareness of his product. The production facility in New Braunfels also has a tasting room available for reservation. The efforts have been worthwhile. Valkyrie's Kiss meads are now available in a number of New Braunfels restaurants and a handful of other locations around the state. Raise a glass and say 'skol,' yall. That's the Viking toast to this sweet thing brewing in New Braunfels. Valkyrie's Kiss Mead, 6500 Texas 46 West in New Braunfels, 830-481-2101, valkyrieskissmead.com.
Army Cherry Nice Global Market Insights Austin Eastciders Meridian Hive Isaac Pruna Kiss Mead Jeff Bezos Freyja Mead You Texans Youngblood Seguin Viking Pruna Texas 46 New Braunfels Pearl Farmers Market Europe Central Texas China Canyon Lake Medina Lake Pearsall Valhalla U.S. Austin New Braunfels Farmers Market San Antonio Texas 46 West Top 10 New Braunfels Restaurants Super Bowl TEXSOM Awards Holdman Honey Blackberry Gold Norse Statista.Com Fortunebusinessinsights.Com Valkyrieskissmead.Com White Claw A-Type The Valkyrie Honey
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