by Brent Cole

Located in downtown Bellingham, Honey Moon has been creating different varieties of mead, wine and cider for a decade, just celebrating their 10th anniversary last month. Owners Murphy and Anna Evans are now taking the next step with their products, canning and selling their award-winning Ciderhead hard cider.

Honey Moon made a first run of 10,000 cans of its hard cider. Flavored ciders include orange, blueberry, honey, rhubarb and raspberry (below). COURTESY PHOTOS

Murphy’s love of home brewing wine and mead goes back years before Honey Moon was created. He went door-to-door asking if he could use fallen fruit in neighborhoods. “It’s great fruit and they’re just letting it rot,” he said, adding, “I was a home brewing enthusiast that was willing to try anything.”

He initially explored making wine as a business, along with some friends, but they quickly realized while their wine was fantastic, the market would be difficult to break into. Instead, he and his wife Anna went into the mead business.

In 2003, they began working on the Honey Moon and by 2005 Anna and Murphy had opened their doors, with mead, wine and hard cider available in the tasting room. The focus, initially, was the tasting room with small-scale wholesale mead sales. Two years ago, they entered the wholesale hard cider market, as “the cider renaissance” began, according to Murphy. They were selling out cider in the tasting room and figured it would also be easier to sell cider on the market by product alone. “You don’t have to explain what the product is,” Murphy said with a laugh (they often need to explain mead).

Initially, the cider was sold in 750ml champagne bottles, as the cider needed to be sparkling. Unfortunately, this led to limitations – the cider goes flat after four or five hours, so the bottles had to be split among friends or consumed quickly.

That issue, though, is being remedied this month when the dry cider will be available in cans, making its debut at the Saturday Bellingham Farmers Market on July 4th and the “Yes We Can” festival at Elizabeth Station.

The canning of their hard cider is a huge step for Anna and Murphy; they’re extremely proud of their hard cider and hope the cans will make it more available to potential customers. 

Honey Moon was the first hard cider maker in Whatcom County. The cider is a dry cider – no sweeteners are used – and the apples are supplied locally by Bellewood Acres. Honey Moon also mixes in different flavors of their meads to create deliciously flavored ciders including orange, blueberry, honey, rhubarb and raspberry – the latter two winning the gold and silver medals respectively at the Pacific Northwest Cider Contest (which features ciders from British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). The cans themselves are manufactured in Olympia and a mobile canning unit out of Portland will process the cans. Their first run will produce a total of 10,000 cans.

Currently, you can find Honey Moon products from Whatcom down to King County at Co-ops, Haagen’s, Elizabeth Station, and The Markets with new opportunities opening up as the canned cider becomes readily available.

Honey Moon is located at 1053 N State Street in Bellingham. For more information, call (360) 734-0728 or see www.honeymoonmeads.com.