Starrlight Mead

Very good tasting. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the mead wines. The young man giving the tasting was very friendly. The only think I was not a fan of is the stop pours. I woudl rather have them short me a sip or two that use those stop pours. No one uses them anymore at tastings. the place was nice and bright and yes a little hard to find, but find it we did. Bought a few really nice meads for the HOlidays.

I bought a LivingSocial deal for a tour and tasting with complementary glasses some time ago and finally made the trek out to Pittsboro. The drive, at least from Carrboro/​Chapel Hill was very pretty in autumn.
I brought my boyfriend and we were warmly greeted and gestured over to a tasting station. We were given cards with descriptions of their approximately 15 – 20 meads and we each selected 8 to taste.
We took a break during our tastings for a quick tour. It’s a small facility and the «tour» is just in the next room and does not take terribly long. It was fairly informative and held my attention. I asked a couple of questions and the owners are enthused about their products.
I wasn’t sure if I’d like mead, because I tend to not like sweeter wines. But I was pleasantly surprised that I really liked 7 of the 8 tastings I tried! I found the herb infused meads to be my favorite and I left with a bottle of the Chai Tea Mead– I don’t even like Chai Tea, but it was delicious! We got to take our Starrlight tasting glasses with us as a nice souvenir.
I’d definitely recommend taking a tour to spend a lazy Saturday or Sunday. The drive was nice, the staff were friendly, and the mead was delicious. I’ll undoubtedly buy a bottle or two to give as Christmas gifts (approximately $ 20 each).

It’s mead! The official drink of Dragonborns everywhere!
Nestled in an old cotton mill (and behind a market and a bicycle shop), Starrlight Mead offers both tastings of their mead wares as well as mead to buy in-​shop. The tasting is cheap, and allows you to taste up to 8 honey wines, including their various regular options, herbal options, and options that sound like mixed drinks (like the Meadarita or Meadjitos).
I particularly enjoyed some of the herbal concoctions (such as Chamomile and the Lemon one), as well as the Spiced Apple Mead.
So if you want mead, this is the place to go.

I met one of the owners at a different event and decided to visit the meadery the next day for a tour and tasting. I thought it was a lovely place with dedicated and knowledgeable staff. I feel like I got a steal on the tasting (8 for $ 6). The tour was interesting, made more so by a discussion of future brews and the direction of the business.

I love this place! It is tucked away behind a cute old factory building. Inside there a few tables to enjoy a glass mead at the store. I was just recently introduced to mead so I am no expert. I will say that they do allow you to try 8 meads which is way more than what some wineries allow you to sample. They have a huge variety to select from so it will be a challenge to stay under your 8 selections. My favorite mead of theirs was the spiced apple which can be served chilled or warmed. I also went on the tour which was nice and educational but that only lasted 15 minutes which I suppose could be longer if you have more questions. This place is definitely worth checking out.

Up until my trip to Starrlight a few weekends ago, I had only associated mead with Renaissance Faires and Medieval Madness and… I wasn’t too big a fan. Thanks to Starrlight, I am now a mead lover (and drinker)! A few friends and I went for a tasting and they had about 12 – 15 different meads to choose from so between the 4 of us, I got to sample all they had to offer. My favorites were the 1. the Traditional Mead Off-​Dry, which tasted a lot like a dry white wine but with a touch of sweet honey — The Traditional will give you a good sense of what mead should taste like. We took home 2 bottles! 2. the peach (a sweet slice of heaven — you can close your eyes and imagine drinking it on a wraparound porch in warm weather, and 3) the Apple Cider — warm, comforting and delicious. They had a few herbal varieties like the Sage and Chamomile that were also tasty, but I don’t think I could drink more than a glass of them.
The tour I could have taken or left. They only have one room on the tour, so it was very short. We did learn a few things, and the staff is really passionate about the product and process. Their enthusiasm is infectious. But that said, if you’ve done your share of brewery and winery tours, you could probably afford to skip it with no harm done.
This place is a hidden treasure that you should definitely check out! Living around Pittsboro, I am so glad that we discovered it. It’s absolutely worth a trip though even if you live a little farther out!

Mead? What’s that? Fermented honey? With more honey added in? Oh sooooo tasty. I’m hooked.
So this is the location where they make and bottle the mead. Family owned and only operational for four years… but tastes like perfection! I have tasted other honey wines before without success so I came here with apprehension. But pleasantly surprised!
First, I highly recommend the tour. The owner is a riot and there is much to learn. Its like being in a chemistry lab… fun gadgets to see!
Next, the tasting. There are many varieties to choose from. So depending on your tastes… I liked the infused mead and sweeter meads… but the others could grow on me…
So if you’re in the area, do not miss this one!

The Mead tasting was yummy, fun and inexpensive with the groupon. Very interesting tour with staff that are obviously very proud of what they do.

Starrlight Mead clearly doesn’t mind whether you come in with a personal philosophy on mead and the nuances of varietal honey, or if you’re looking to score some Viking crunk juice before the next ep of Game of Thrones. They’ve got the chops and the attitude to meet you where you are and tell you anything you want to know about mead. This is a rare marriage of professionalism and joie de vivre, and the experience is a delight. You can find bottles of their hand-​crafted, smartly developed meads in stores around North Carolina– but do yourself a favor this weekend and take the tour.

Actually went for Mead Day (and promptly forgot about it), so here we are.
Starrlight Mead is situated at the back of a sort of renovated block of industrial buildings. Or something. I actually don’t know, because they were closed during Mead Day. In fact, the Meadery itself was closed off on Mead day — I guess they expected a lot more people than they could handle or something, so they had everyone out on the grass.
And by grass, I mean a small lot in the back of the building. Most people would consider it about the size of a front yard, but you have to deal with what you have, I suppose.
In this case, there were a handful of those pop-​up tents hawking wares of the kind you usually see at Renaissance Faires, except the quality was perhaps a bit lower. Then again, the quality at those fairs (faires?) isn’t all that great, so maybe the location was just a little sad, and the problem was that there weren’t a whole bunch of scantily clad wenches wandering around with turkey legs to distract from that.
Regardless, most of the action was happening in the basement of the (not the meadery) building. And by action, I mean a bunch of people standing around, trying to get a taste of mead, at a few bucks a pop. I’m all for getting people into the World of Mead and all — but really? If you’re going to try and gear up people to try and sell your product on this one day a year (it is just one day, right?), wouldn’t you want to give them samples for free? Not big ones, I get that — but just give them a little taste, so that they can get hooked, and then come back and buy bottle after bottle at full price? You know, like the pusher on the playground?
As it turns out, as nice as the operators of Starrlight Mead are, and as fervent as their not-​quite-​ren-​faire fans are, the product isn’t the best tasting thing in the world, so selling tastings is probably a good idea, since it will mean that they at least make something from all those people, rather than having them make nothing from the day. And that «mead-​jito»? I’m a fan of things like the «beer-​mosa», but the mead-​jito should be forgotten and buried like it’s a Jumanji game.

Had a groupon for tasting and it was well worth the trip. We met this group at several events over the years and have bee wanting to visit. I prefer the. Taste of mead to most grape based wines. They have some great flavored meads, well worth the trip to see the place and taste the mead.

Was sent here after learning about the NC wineries tour and for their spice apple mead! It was great vibes when we walked in, and everyone was so nice. I mean you get to try 8 meads for $ 6 and keep your glass, amazing! Also, it’s right by their local market, so if you get hungry you can walk right over and grab a snack.
You can also, get a tour of their mead making facilities and learn about the history of Starrlight Mead.
Loved the experience and vibes and cannot wait to try other local NC wineries!

Okay, so the mead is great. That’s a given. But the tasting that my girlfriend I did was SO much fun. The meadery is charming and it was fun to see owners take so much pride in their work. (I mean, who wouldn’t? This stuff is fantastic.) We lived in Raleigh at the time and it was a fantastic date.
Favorites: the Traditional off-​dry mead and the seasonal off-​dry blackberry mead (I think it’s off-​dry. Whichever the drier one is.)

It was the last weekend before taxes were due, I had already left my office and done the last tax return for the season (so I thought), and last-​second filers and procrastinators were calling and asking me to do their taxes — I, on the other hand, had other plans. I quoted outrageous prices along with «I’ll meet you at my office» and justified the prices by calling it a premium for waiting until the last minute. I got responses like «H&R Block doesn’t charge that kind of premium!» and I then suggested that maybe they could wait in line at H&R Block or similar places. I truly did not want to see another tax form, and it worked to my advantage.
So, based on Christina G’s write up of Pittsboro during the previous week or two, I decided to pack up the family and head out in that direction!
We visited several small shops on the little excursion including a neat wine shop tucked away behind a woodworking shop. The highlight of the trip, however, was Starrlight Mead! Had I known there was a livingsocial deal for such an event, I would have snatched it up. Much to my chagrin, having been in the throes of tax season and trying to also keep up with the rest of my daily responsibilities, things like Living Social and groupon have taken a back seat to work and school.
The meadery is in a small building behind what seems to be a former industrial complex that’s been converted to offices and a farmers market. The tasting was heavenly, and my bride marked down which varieties she liked best — (HINT HINT — if momma ain’t happy, ain’t NOBODY happy). The ginger variety was terrific, and last night it went perfect with a thai seafood dish. The apple spice was what we would call «Dessert in a glass!»
While my bride and I were tasting, my daughter was entertained by the owner with a «Honey» tasting. She has raved about it ever since! Kudos to the ownership for giving some attention to our ‘tween and helping to make it an enjoyable experience for her!
The tour wasn’t a huge production, but it was informative and also made to be humorous! It was cool to see some «peeps» stuck in a carboy for the fermentation process, and got me wondering how I can fit one of those big stainless steel double walled contraptions into the closet next to the kitchen… umm, probably won’t work.
All in all, we dropped some cash, walked out with 9 bottles, a «membership» the two tasting glasses, and some tips on what we can do to improve our own wine/​mead making processes. This stop capped off a terrific Saturday afternoon with my family.

I should start out by saying that this was my first real experience with mead, so feel free to take the first part with a grain of salt. This place is awesome. My group of friends decided to visit after seeing a lot of talk about mead on the interwebs. In our excitement we picked up a random bottle of mead from the store, tried it, and were dreading the trip to Starrlight because none of us liked it… at all.
Fast forward a few months and we make our way to Pittsboro for an alcohol filled trip into culture. They had 7 varieties of Honey Wine that seem to be their standard offerings as well as 7 made with herbs. For the tasting we chose 8 of the 14. Everyone in my party was blown away by the quality and tastiness of the different offerings. The off dry blackberry, semi-​sweet traditional, spiced apple, and sage were all well beyond anything any of us expected to try, we even left with some to enjoy later.
As much as we enjoyed the mead, the owners and employees at Starrlight were even better. The tour of the establishment was done by one of the owners who was more than able and willing to answer any questions we had from the mead making process, to dorky science questions, and even how one might go about starting as beekeepers.
The gentleman who was in charge of the tasting was knowledgeable, personable, and able to put up with my group of obnoxious friends (which says more than I can explain here).
As others have said, Starrlight can be somewhat tricky to find but they do have small signs with arrows pointing the way towards it.
TL:DR If you want to do something, possibly, a little out of your norm, drink some very interesting, and in my opinion tasty, wines made by some very passionate and interesting people, the tasting and tour at Starrlight mead is a great way to spend an afternoon.

I was surprised to find this place in Pittsboro. It was a very pleasant surprise. This is behind the Market Place, not easy to find and you will not be able to see it off the road. But it is worth you looking for it.
When you pull up you will see a few Bee Hives (Supers). They use all North Carolina fruits and berries and honey. Another surprise is that they make all the wine on site. They have a nice variety of Honey Wines.
Traditional Mead Off Dry.
Off Dry Pear Mead.
Off Dry Blackberry Mead.
Traditional Mead Semi-​Sweet
Semi sweet Blackberry Mead
Sweet Peach Mead
Spiced Apple Mead.
They offer a Tasting to see what will tickle your tongue. It is $ 5.00 for the tasting Flash your Unilocal cupon when you check in and save $ 1.00.
Wines are $ 25.00 and under. Discounts in 6 and 12 bottle purchases and you can join the Mead Club and save even more.
Stop in and drink Honey Wine, You will be hooked.

Friendly, knowledgable staff and the mead is interesting. The tour was nice, liked learning how much they use local products and hearing how the business was started. I liked the semi-​dry, others in our group liked others, but everyone liked some of them.
Outside they have a few tables so you can buy a bottle & enjoy sipping mead in the sun.
It is hard to find. The complex they are in is a bit back & they are around back. There are signs once in the parking area. Well worth finding them.

This meadery makes its product from local honey harvested from its own hives. The facility is in the back of the office block you just have to follow the signs. The tasting is $ 5 per person for one ounce servings and you get to keep the glass! The flavors they have are interesting and delicious. There is one that tasted just like apple pie and christmas baking all at the same time! If you are from the Raleigh, NC area the mead is sold at Bottle Revolution. They are also part of the North Carolina Wine Trail if you feel like a fun day trip. One slight drawback is the price but i think its worth it for an occasional treat.

After buzzing around my house out of sheer delight over Starrlight’s Sweet Peach variety I picked up at Sam’s, I just *had* to visit the meadery. So, my husband and I ventured out to Pittsboro for a tasting and tour one Saturday afternoon.
We had some trouble finding the place because I neglected to read the part of their website that clearly says they’re in the Chatham Mills Complex. But, my bad aside, we still had trouble finding them within the complex because they’re in a separate white building behind the main red brick building.
Tastings are $ 5 per person, and you go down the list, trying each of their varieties (seven total, when I went), with sips of water and some oyster crackers in between to cleanse your palate. And you get to keep your glass!
Their website indicates tour times, but it was very informal and all we had to do was ask. Even though it’s a tiny operation without much to actually show, the story about this true mom-​and-​pop start-​up was really inspiring and made me happy to buy a bottle.

Visited this store yesterday, as I was going on a tour of the Chatham Marketplace/​Chatham Mills. The woman who works there/​co-​owns the place was very nice and enthusiastic about her business. Was able to taste the traditional off-​dry and semi-​sweet wines. The semi-​sweet one was very good in my opinion, but many of the people I was with preferred the off-​dry. I plan on returning to purchase a bottle or a few for my parents, who collect wine and may be interested in tasting theirs. Wish they were sold in more stores throughout the region, but definitely understand the fact that they can’t make the wine fast enough for the demand. Hopefully they’re able to expand really soon!