A “meadup” can be made in Columbus at the Bearded Viking Mead Company. Traveling off Highway 90 to skirt the downtown, nicknamed “Sheep Dip,” and over the railroad tracks and across the Yellowstone River is a Quonset hut where the ancient beverage, mead, is made. Here, CEO and founder JT “Viko” Robertson crafts an ancient form of wine made with honey instead of grapes.
He named his business Bearded Viking, which began “as a joke.” After leaving the military, he started wearing dreadlocks and sporting a beard, which earned him the nickname "Bearded Viking" while he lived in Salt Lake City. “So, I made an Instagram handle called Utah Bearded Viking, and it ended up being kind of a big thing over time. So, when I named the company, it was just fitting because it was the beaded Viking’s mead company.”
In 2019, “I learned to make mead because I just harvested a hundred pounds of honey from my own beehives,” Robertson shares of his foray into making honey wine. “I was watching a show called The 13th Warrior with Antonio Banderas while I was working at five o’clock in the morning for my old job.” In the movie, the Viking warrior Herger offers a horn of mead to the Muslim protagonist, Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan. There’s a line where he says, ‘I can’t drink anything that’s fermented hop and barley or fruit of the vine.” Herger then laughs and says that the drink is made from honey, to which Ahmed takes a drink. “So I canceled all my meetings, and I went to YouTube University, and that’s where I started.”
“Next thing you know, I’ve got 15 vats of five-gallon jugs, basically of different flavors that I’m working with and experimenting on. And my girlfriend was very kind because it was in our kitchen and she didn’t kill me, so that’s nice.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, after Robertson and his family traveled to Glacier National Park, they decided to relocate from Utah. They were looking at a property in the area, a “beautiful home, just a little bit outside of what I was willing to spend on a home. It was on 60 acres.” As Robertson and his girlfriend were walking back to their truck to leave, “A retired army chaplain came driving down, saw my Marine Corps plates, stopped, asked me about what we were doing, and he told me he’d sell me this house on 20 acres for a deal.” A “handshake agreement on the side of the road in Montana” sealed the deal and established Robertson’s fate.
His past experiences provided the backbone for building his Meadery. He spent 8 years in the Marine Corps and 6 years in the Army. As a cybersecurity project manager for 10 years, he has gained a deep understanding of business processes. Then, as he was building the structure for Bearded Viking Mead Company, “I got my master’s degree in business administration, so that way I could actually formulate everything else. So, my business plan was peer reviewed by people from Fortune 500 Companies, CEOs, and COOs, from those companies, to see if this was good.”
Robertson also picked up knowledge in chemistry. “So, I have precise formulas that are measured to the gram for everything. So, every single time you pick up a bottle of our mead, you pour yourself a glass, it tastes the exact same way as it did last time.”
However, he realized that he did not know everything. “Most businesses fail because they think they can. Somebody can’t do it themselves the whole time. You have people who are really good at being electricians (for instance), but they’re not good at being business owners because you have to do the business. You can’t just be an electrician, if you know what I mean?”
Robertson recruited his band of brothers, including Alex “Jarl” Martinez, as the COO, who was an ex-Marine and a classmate from the University of Phoenix's business program. Ryan “Doc” Sim, a former Navy Corpsman, serves as CIFO, while Charlie “One Horse” Cleaves, a retired Army veteran, works as Vice President of Sales. Rudy Martinez, Tito Negrete, and Nathan Southam make up the rest of the team.
On the ground at the Bearded Mead Company in Columbus, “there’s my apprentice and then the VP of Sales and myself. That’s it. The rest of the team is scattered throughout, mostly in Utah.”
Their efforts established 16 distinct flavors with each carrying a name with a story or significance, with the exception of OG, “Everything else is Norse, so they’re all based off of Norse mythology or Norse, the Norse language. So we have everything ranging from vanilla bean, coffee to jalapeño, raspberry,” to the latest options of mint chocolate chip, pumpkin spice and raspberry lemonade.
OH-G is Bearded Viking Mead Company’s original mead. “I call it Oh G because I was an original gangster from the 1980s. That’s my mindset. It’s a joke. It tastes like a light honey flavor from front to back with floral notes on the back end.”
Hylli is for Pepper Heads, made with raspberries and jalapeños, and named by one of his friends. “You think it’s going to be spicy, but when you drink it, it’s the flavor of jalapeños, honey in the middle, and raspberry wash in the back end. Healy is Norse for grace. So one of my best friends is a devout Christian. I’m a practicing Norse Pagan, I follow Odin. He follows Jesus. Jalapeños and raspberries don’t necessarily go together, either.”
Another popular mead is made with huckleberries. The pink-tinted beverage is named Laechner, meaning "healer." “My best friend, his name’s Ryan Smith. We went to Iraq together during the invasion. He was a corpsman, and huckleberries were used by Native Americans to help heal, so he named it "Healer."
Other choices include Fjor Mead made with peaches, Tyr with pears, Valkyrie with lemon and blueberries, and orange-flavored Gungnir.
The honey for the mead comes literally down the road from Bearded Viking Mead Company. Sunshine Apiary, owned by Lance and Patty Sun, has been producing honey since the 1980s. “I think I’ve probably purchased 12 or 13 tons of honey since we opened.”
Mead can take from a few weeks to over a year to make, depending on the recipe and desired quality. The primary fermentation process typically takes 2 to 6 weeks, but it can vary widely. After fermentation, the mead needs to be aged for at least 3 to 6 months to develop its flavors, though some people age it for a year or more. Robertson’s mead takes 6 weeks to build with the process he has created.
“Right now, we can ferment 2600 mini bottles per vat per month, and if we really wanted to up production, we could probably hit somewhere around 40,000 bottles a month.”
Bearded Viking Mead Company’s beverages, ranging from 12.5% to 16% ABV, sell from $14.50 to $16.50 in mini formats to $25 to $46 for the 750ml size and can be found in gas stations and liquor stores. The tasting room is “open Monday through Thursday from 11 to 5 for tastings during the day, and then Fridays and Saturdays, we’re typically open from 4 to 9.” On weekends, the fire pits are used for gatherings.
Robertson “Viko” encourages visitors. “Just come out to the Bearded Viking. Come out and sample. It’s a completely different experience. It’s not beer. It’s not wine. It’s classified as wine, but it tastes different. I coined the term, ‘It’s time for a mead up.’ Grab a bottle of mead and take it out to the fire with your friends.”
