All-Wise, all-American and all grown up, former Disney Channel star, Dylan Sprouse is bringing locally sourced mead to Brooklyn, N.Y.
The former Suite Life of Zack and Cody star (also of Friends and Big Daddy fame, but who’s counting) has launched All-Wise Meadery in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood with co-founders Matt Kwan and Doug Brochu. The debut product is a dry mead made from raw and unfiltered honey from Tremblay Apiaries in New York’s Finger Lakes region, reports Food & Wine.
Mead, a fermented beverage made with honey, water, and yeast, is often misjudged as sweet, viscous “honey wine” sipped by Medieval folk or Renaissance Fair enthusiasts. Not so at All-Wise. Like other modern meaderies, such as Enlightenment Wines in Brooklyn’s neighboring Bushwick neighborhood, All-Wise will produce dry, oak-aged meads, occasionally using other ingredients like oolong tea.
Sprouse, now 25, began brewing mead when he was 16 years old, Munchies reports.
“It’s often recommended to you as a place to begin your passion,” Sprouse told Food & Wine. “I continued brewing mead because of its interesting history, flavor profile, and its relatively small market, which only intrigued me more feverishly.”
He continued, “I’m a firm believer that practice and trial bests study with something as hands on as brewing. Since mead is a relatively small industry in the U.S., there aren’t many forms of apprenticeship per se, so I mostly scoured my resources for new insights and just cracked down on brewing on a regular basis.”
He’s come a long way since “I wipe my own ass.” All-Wise is now available for pre-order online.
