The Hive Winery

With all that's going on up at the State Capitol in the realm of liquor condemnation, it's good to know that there are still a few bright spots on the horizon.

Utahans who strive for a bit of normalcy come from all walks of life and continue to create a little bit of normalcy in our sometimes backward world.

Take Jay & Lori Yahne of Layton. These two Geotechnical Engineers have a passion that extend beyond their chosen profession. They love wines. Fruit wines and meads to be exact. And they want to share their passion with you. So they started The Hive Winery.

For month now the Yahne's have been formulating various wines and meads for a hopeful July release. "If all goes as planned we anticipate our Utah Red Raspberry and Utah Black Currant wines will be ready around the first of July". Jay informed me last week. "Our current capacity is about 1100 gallons per run. once we get our legs we will increase that amount to 2500 gallons per run. Due to how we make our wines we can make 2 runs per year which should ultimately give us up to 5000 gallons per year. If the demand for our wines is there we have the ability to increase this amount, but we want to see what demand is before we ramp up production".

The Raspberry and Black Currant wines aren't the only labels The Hive plans to offer. There's a Utah Peach Wine, Strawberry Wine The earliest these will likely be ready in August or September.

Meads are also due to be produced. The Yahne's plan on creating Melomel Meads as a signature wine line. A Melomel Mead is when the fruit and honey are fermented together. Jay believes this process intensifies both the fruit and honey flavors, and make for a better all around mead.

Meads seem to be a natural progression for a lot of beer drinkers and home brewers, I have a feeling The hive Winery will have a cult following when their first bottles are released. Remember you can't buy them right now, we'll be sure and get the word out later this summer.

Cheers!

Photo: Standard Examiner