At first -- and pretty much every -- glance, the Wandering Wind Meadery in Charleston's Elk City District is not your run-of-the-mill watering hole or pinky-lifting, brandy-snifter type of hoity-toity wine bar.
And owner and co-founder Dave Bragg is not a run-of-the-mill proprietor, either.
He was born in New Orleans, his family returning to Clay County and family roots there a few years later. (Bragg's late grandmother, Alyce Faye Bragg, was a longtime, homespun Charleston Gazette-Mail columnist; "She was what everybody thought she was: the ideal country grandma," Dave recounted.)
His family relocated to Putnam County, where he developed a passion for music while attending Winfield High School. After graduation, he studied music education at Glenville State University.
"I got into World Music, and it broadened my horizons," he said. "I got into vaudeville, variety shows, things like that."
Eventually, he attended Marshall University and graduated with a Religious Studies degree. "I got interested in ethnomusicology. Academically, that's where my interests lie: ethnic and cultural music and traditions."
Circa the turn of the 21st century, Dave practiced and taught Middle Eastern and African hand drumming throughout the Kanawha Valley. That vocation resulted in a midriff-shifting sideline. "There were three belly dance troupes here back in the day we helped start. That was an interesting scene and got me a lot of exposure in the belly dance community. A lot of the dancers were into fire performance. There was a lot of crossover between belly dance and sideshow," he explained.
The gyrational alliance led to him performing sideshow routines and stunts. "I started with fire breathing," he said. "It was an extreme way to start -- most people work up to that. That got my foot in the door with other groups. I worked with the Palace of Illusions in 2014. That was one of the last traveling sideshows in America. We call those 'grind shows,' because it's 12 hours a day, a half-hour show nonstop, back to back."
After traveling from New Hampshire to Arizona to perform at Renaissance Faires, sideshow and steampunk conventions and other venues, Dave extinguished his career as a fire-breather, juggler, stilt-walker, etc. in 2021, as hand ailments, including arthritis, increasingly impeded his manual dexterity.
"I did the Pennsylvania Ren Faire for a couple of months in the fall of '21. At that point, we had already started the paperwork for the meadery, so after that, I signed the lease on this place and started on that."
Along with former partner Dawn Racer, Dave opened Wandering Wind Meadery at 422 Washington St., W., in Charleston in 2022 to concoct and sell small-batch, artisanal meads.
On the Ren Faire and medieval re-enactment circuit, Dave had sampled many a mead over 20 years, which inspired the West Side enterprise.
The market for a meadery was indubitably a unique and wide open one for the capital city. Micro-breweries have flourished throughout the region in recent years, but "I looked around and saw there are no meaderies in area; it seemed like a good hole in the market. Charleston hadn't had any wineries before, so I saw an opportunity here," the 47-year-old said.
Tastes of honey
Dave explained that mead differs from other wines because it's a honey-based product. "At least 50% fermentable sugars have to come from honey for it to be legally called mead. That's the difference between normal and mead wines.
"Mead's a wine, not a liquor; the stronger ones are like 13 to 14% alcohol content. It's a strong wine.
"Mead is such a great drink and there's such a variety, because honey is such a mild flavor," he added. "You can do a lot with it. Some people are just very much into the honey itself. I do a lot of fruits and spices. I use the honey as a sweetener and as a base. It allows me to do a lot of experimental flavors. I think I have 36 flavors now approved.
"I spent a couple of years doing experimental batches. I approached it like making a sauce; I worked professionally as a saucier. Rather than just sweet or dry, I think of spectrums; there are a lot of other directions you can take with bitters, orange peel or zest for tartness. Or spiciness with peppers. With four or five different directions, you can get a much more round taste and product."
Music and merriment amid the mead
Mead-bibbing is far from Wandering Wind's only medieval-motivated socializing option.
Along with its tasting room, Wandering Wind Meadery provides a colorful and sometimes raucous setting for activities such as drum circles; game, music and open-mic comedy nights; and ladies' brunches. Drawing upon his own history as a showman, Dave has devised themed Viking and Pirate nights to encourage historical, possibly hysterical cosplay and revelry.
"When we opened, we knew that mead wasn't something that a lot of people are familiar with," Dave said. "We knew educating people would be part of the growing into it. We knew we'd need something else to draw people in, in addition to the mead. I wanted to do something unique, because mead is a pretty unique product.
"We do our Pirate and Viking costume nights once a month. The idea is to put a little bit of effort into costuming -- you don't have to go all out, just a little bit -- and bring up to a 32-ounce mug. We'll fill your session mug for $10. It gets people out to do something different -- come out and drink with pirates. We have an interesting crew of local guys who like to dress up like pirates who come out to drink and sing shanties."
Classes for potential mead makers are also offered regularly at the meadery. "I do the mead-making workshops about once a month, usually the last weekend," Dave said. "It's something educational to draw people in that they don't have around here. You take the class and learn the basics and sanitation and how to do it at home. I walk you through starting your first batch. I send you home with the nutrients to feed it for the next few days and a handout explaining what you're doing and with some online resources where you can buy more supplies or look up recipes or things like that. In an hour or hour and a half, you'll get your first batch started."
For prospective home mead-makers, he cautions, "It's a double-edged sword. Mead, in my opinion, is the easiest alcohol to make, compared to beers and wines, because it can be as simple as honey and water. You don't have to boil anything. You don't need extra ingredients. But, because it's honey, it's expensive, and if you do anything wrong, it's very obvious."
He advises ordering mead-making materials via computer keyboard. "There are a few places around here where you can go. I go to Unicorn Wine Guild in Belpre, Ohio, when I need supplies, but if you live around here, the best options are online. For honey, you can go to Walmart; they have decent honey for reasonable prices. The bigger in bulk you can buy, the cheaper it's going to be. You're going to need 15 to 17 pounds of honey for a 5-gallon batch, which you can usually pick up at Walmart," Dave said.
When he's not being a meadmeister, Dave revisits the medieval-minded stage a couple of times a year. "I still perform at the West Virginia Ren Faire. That's the only gig I kept from my retirement; performers really never retire until they're dead. I'm the drummer for the joust at the West Virginia Ren Faire in June. There's an event in Pennsylvania in August I go to. It's the biggest medieval re-enactment in America, called Pennsic. I've been doing that for 20-some years.
"There's a great community in West Virginia of alcohol makers," he added. "I know quite a few of them, the people who own cideries, breweries and wineries in the state. I really appreciate that we all see it as helping each other and not as competition. We all have good working relationships and try to send people around to each other to visit."
For more information about Wandering Winds Meadery's selection and community events coming up, call 304-533-2267 or visit the meadery's page on Facebook.
And owner and co-founder Dave Bragg is not a run-of-the-mill proprietor, either.
He was born in New Orleans, his family returning to Clay County and family roots there a few years later. (Bragg's late grandmother, Alyce Faye Bragg, was a longtime, homespun Charleston Gazette-Mail columnist; "She was what everybody thought she was: the ideal country grandma," Dave recounted.)
"I got into World Music, and it broadened my horizons," he said. "I got into vaudeville, variety shows, things like that."
Eventually, he attended Marshall University and graduated with a Religious Studies degree. "I got interested in ethnomusicology. Academically, that's where my interests lie: ethnic and cultural music and traditions."
Circa the turn of the 21st century, Dave practiced and taught Middle Eastern and African hand drumming throughout the Kanawha Valley. That vocation resulted in a midriff-shifting sideline. "There were three belly dance troupes here back in the day we helped start. That was an interesting scene and got me a lot of exposure in the belly dance community. A lot of the dancers were into fire performance. There was a lot of crossover between belly dance and sideshow," he explained.
The gyrational alliance led to him performing sideshow routines and stunts. "I started with fire breathing," he said. "It was an extreme way to start -- most people work up to that. That got my foot in the door with other groups. I worked with the Palace of Illusions in 2014. That was one of the last traveling sideshows in America. We call those 'grind shows,' because it's 12 hours a day, a half-hour show nonstop, back to back."
After traveling from New Hampshire to Arizona to perform at Renaissance Faires, sideshow and steampunk conventions and other venues, Dave extinguished his career as a fire-breather, juggler, stilt-walker, etc. in 2021, as hand ailments, including arthritis, increasingly impeded his manual dexterity.
"I did the Pennsylvania Ren Faire for a couple of months in the fall of '21. At that point, we had already started the paperwork for the meadery, so after that, I signed the lease on this place and started on that."
Along with former partner Dawn Racer, Dave opened Wandering Wind Meadery at 422 Washington St., W., in Charleston in 2022 to concoct and sell small-batch, artisanal meads.
On the Ren Faire and medieval re-enactment circuit, Dave had sampled many a mead over 20 years, which inspired the West Side enterprise.
The market for a meadery was indubitably a unique and wide open one for the capital city. Micro-breweries have flourished throughout the region in recent years, but "I looked around and saw there are no meaderies in area; it seemed like a good hole in the market. Charleston hadn't had any wineries before, so I saw an opportunity here," the 47-year-old said.
Tastes of honey
Dave explained that mead differs from other wines because it's a honey-based product. "At least 50% fermentable sugars have to come from honey for it to be legally called mead. That's the difference between normal and mead wines.
"Mead's a wine, not a liquor; the stronger ones are like 13 to 14% alcohol content. It's a strong wine.
"Mead is such a great drink and there's such a variety, because honey is such a mild flavor," he added. "You can do a lot with it. Some people are just very much into the honey itself. I do a lot of fruits and spices. I use the honey as a sweetener and as a base. It allows me to do a lot of experimental flavors. I think I have 36 flavors now approved.
"I spent a couple of years doing experimental batches. I approached it like making a sauce; I worked professionally as a saucier. Rather than just sweet or dry, I think of spectrums; there are a lot of other directions you can take with bitters, orange peel or zest for tartness. Or spiciness with peppers. With four or five different directions, you can get a much more round taste and product."
Music and merriment amid the mead
Mead-bibbing is far from Wandering Wind's only medieval-motivated socializing option.
Along with its tasting room, Wandering Wind Meadery provides a colorful and sometimes raucous setting for activities such as drum circles; game, music and open-mic comedy nights; and ladies' brunches. Drawing upon his own history as a showman, Dave has devised themed Viking and Pirate nights to encourage historical, possibly hysterical cosplay and revelry.
"When we opened, we knew that mead wasn't something that a lot of people are familiar with," Dave said. "We knew educating people would be part of the growing into it. We knew we'd need something else to draw people in, in addition to the mead. I wanted to do something unique, because mead is a pretty unique product.
"We do our Pirate and Viking costume nights once a month. The idea is to put a little bit of effort into costuming -- you don't have to go all out, just a little bit -- and bring up to a 32-ounce mug. We'll fill your session mug for $10. It gets people out to do something different -- come out and drink with pirates. We have an interesting crew of local guys who like to dress up like pirates who come out to drink and sing shanties."
Classes for potential mead makers are also offered regularly at the meadery. "I do the mead-making workshops about once a month, usually the last weekend," Dave said. "It's something educational to draw people in that they don't have around here. You take the class and learn the basics and sanitation and how to do it at home. I walk you through starting your first batch. I send you home with the nutrients to feed it for the next few days and a handout explaining what you're doing and with some online resources where you can buy more supplies or look up recipes or things like that. In an hour or hour and a half, you'll get your first batch started."
For prospective home mead-makers, he cautions, "It's a double-edged sword. Mead, in my opinion, is the easiest alcohol to make, compared to beers and wines, because it can be as simple as honey and water. You don't have to boil anything. You don't need extra ingredients. But, because it's honey, it's expensive, and if you do anything wrong, it's very obvious."
He advises ordering mead-making materials via computer keyboard. "There are a few places around here where you can go. I go to Unicorn Wine Guild in Belpre, Ohio, when I need supplies, but if you live around here, the best options are online. For honey, you can go to Walmart; they have decent honey for reasonable prices. The bigger in bulk you can buy, the cheaper it's going to be. You're going to need 15 to 17 pounds of honey for a 5-gallon batch, which you can usually pick up at Walmart," Dave said.
When he's not being a meadmeister, Dave revisits the medieval-minded stage a couple of times a year. "I still perform at the West Virginia Ren Faire. That's the only gig I kept from my retirement; performers really never retire until they're dead. I'm the drummer for the joust at the West Virginia Ren Faire in June. There's an event in Pennsylvania in August I go to. It's the biggest medieval re-enactment in America, called Pennsic. I've been doing that for 20-some years.
"There's a great community in West Virginia of alcohol makers," he added. "I know quite a few of them, the people who own cideries, breweries and wineries in the state. I really appreciate that we all see it as helping each other and not as competition. We all have good working relationships and try to send people around to each other to visit."
For more information about Wandering Winds Meadery's selection and community events coming up, call 304-533-2267 or visit the meadery's page on Facebook.
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