happyGotMead is my tribute to the art and craft of meadmaking, and a collection of all the information I’ve been able to find about mead over the years, both on and off the web.

I am a meadmaker and mead-drinker living in the Raleigh, NC area. I got interested in mead first in the basement of a college buddies’ house in the early 80’s, and then again when I started going to Renaissance Faires, way back in the mid-80’s (yeah, I’m that old!). My first mead was Chaucers’, a commercial mead from California. I quickly discovered that Chaucers is only one of a number of commercial meaderies out there, and that it was really easy to make mead. Since then, the number of commercial meaderies has risen from a couple dozen to nearly 400. I’m happy to say at a few of them got their start right here, on GotMead, learning their craft as home meadmakers before they ‘went pro’.

GotMead started out as a one-page collection of links (this was before Google, even before Yahoo, when AOL ruled the interwebs) that was my personal stash of mead making info. When people started to find it, and then to send me email asking for more information, and what did I know about this mead stuff anyway, I started adding more info, then articles. Then recipes. You see what happened.

When it became obvious that I had to create an actual website, I got with my friend Jeremy Clos, the design wizard behind the old GotMead ‘look’, we created GotMead in 1997. Jeremy went on to create his shop, the Tudor Shoppe (http://www.tudorshoppe.com) and eventually went his own way (though we’ve remained close friends). The things we learned in making GotMead let him create a business that ended up selling over a quarter million dollars in period costumes and accessories, for many years.  Over the years (and several design changes, hosting changes, updates, crashes and overhauls) Gotmead.com has evolved into a site that averages over 108,000 visitors a month, who come seeking mead-making information, meaderies, and all sorts of other info.

Now, I am contacted by and quoted in magazines, news articles, radio shows and other news outlets around the globe, because GotMead really did become the biggest collection of mead info anywhere. Who woulda thunk? Not me!

I feel that GotMead is the most complete collection of mead information anywhere on the internet, and will continue to strive to expand and enhance the site in an effort to create a place where people can come to find out whatever it is that they seek about mead.

While I am not *the* ‘expert’ in meadmaking, I am privileged to call ‘friend’ many people who are extremely talented meadmakers, both hobbyists and professionals. Their input appears in many places on GotMead, and I am seriously grateful to them for their kind contributions to the site. People like Oskaar, here on our forums, and Ken Schramm, owner of Schramm’s Mead and author of ‘The Compleat Meadmaker’.

GotMead is hosted and maintained entirely from donations and patron memberships, plus a little advertising and affiliate payments here and there.  I am working to have it become a self-supporting entity, that will let me hire some staff, especially writers, and through consulting with meaderies (I am a professional small business marketing consultant), advertising, sponsors and the patronage of my visitors, it will happen.

Thanks for visiting, and Wassail!

Vicky Rowe
Founder and Owner, Gotmead.com
The Meadwench

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