Rae Adams Will Never Stop Learning
From beer to wine to cider to mead, this alcohol professional is thirsty for more.
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Recently named one of the recipients of the American Cider Association’s 2024 Cider is for Everyone scholarships, Rae Adams is ready to bring mead to the forefront. The scholarship to attend CiderCon in Portland, Oregon “was a dream come true,” she says, an opportunity to present mead she helped create to experts from around the world. But the dream realized was no accident. “Unless you work towards a dream, it’s never going to come true,” she says. Visualizing where and who she wants to be, then working towards making it happen seems to be a constant in her life, even if sometimes she ends up in unexpected places. Her next destination? “In a perfect world in 10 years—retired and on vacation, taking our mead onto ships and saying ‘Here, serve this!’” she laughs. Sign me up for that cruise!
Dry January is behind us, and Rae couldn’t be happier about it. “Dry January is a murderous thing,” she says, only half jokingly. “Let’s change it to Dry July.”
A month of widespread sobriety during the slowest part of the year for many food and drink establishments is hard enough on its own. But Graham County, where Rae works as the director of sales for Wehrloom Honey & Meadery, is one of the four remaining dry counties in North Carolina. You can still find and purchase alcohol in dry counties, but not much, and not everywhere. Even on a good day, it’s challenging for producers and retailers.
But even deeply ingrained prohibitionist attitudes towards alcohol coupled with dry January won’t stop Rae. Working in mead is a constant affair. “We do a lot of production in the winter so that we can make it through the spring and summer, before it needs to be all hands on deck,” she explains. Mead is made with fermented honey, and when stored properly, honey doesn’t spoil. Mead makers in her area collect honey from late March to early September, storing it until it’s needed for production. “We can make mead all year round,” she says.
Rae didn’t always work in mead, or in North Carolina for that matter. Hospitality is in her blood, and alcohol education has been her passion for years. Originally from Chicago, her father worked as an entertainer in bars and clubs. She grew up watching him perform before she decided to study physics in college. “I was going to be an engineer,” she says. “But then as I got over 21, I would go to bars, and my most intellectual conversations happened at the bar… so I migrated towards the bar scene.”
Once she moved behind the bar, she eventually made her way to Eataly, a high-end restaurant and retail concept where management introduced her to the language of wine used by sommeliers. In that type of elevated culinary setting, Rae said she began experimenting with making her own concoctions like sour mix and syrups to finesse her own skills and continue learning about every type of alcohol there is.
Her journey then led her to The Northman, Chicago’s European-style beer and cider garden known for having some of the most knowledgeable cider experts and biggest cider lists in the country. Working there was “life-changing,” says Rae, inspiring even more curiosity and determination to further her skills. But eventually, she decided she wanted to trade skyscrapers for mountains, and when she got recruited to help open a bar on the Cheoah River, she took a chance and headed south.
One morning, one of the trainees came in after clearly having consumed alcohol. Where on earth could he get his hands on booze at 11 am in a dry county? He told her a new meadery had opened and the taps were flowing. Curious about the relatively obscure beverage, Rae decided to pay a visit to the meadery and got to chatting with the owners—Aron and Jessica Wehr.
Their conversations became routine. “We would just sit and brainstorm, talk and connect, and then they were like ‘So—you're not going back to that bar next year, right? You're gonna come here to the farm and work with us, right?’” she recalls. “That was five years ago. I’ve been with Wehrloom since then.”
Her days are varied, split between handling Wehrloom’s accounts and helping with production. It’s a small team, she says, estimating four or five employees (including her), with a few more who come on seasonally. “This is going to sound cheesy, but I don’t have many days where I don’t love what I do,” Rae says. To her, mead making is the perfect blend of art and science, and a way for her to scratch her ongoing education itch while also exercising her creative muscles.
Rae’s creativity extends beyond mead—specifically, through music. “I used to be at karaoke two or three nights a week,” she laughs. “I fancy myself a musician, but I don’t practice enough, so karaoke kind of helps me scratch that itch a little bit.” When she’s not holding the mic, she’s riding a bike—a motorcycle, that is. Like music, her love for two wheels comes from her father as well. “I’ve been a part of that culture since probably 2013.”
Motorcycles, physics, karaoke, mead—Rae credits her expansive life to always being open-minded, a mindset she hopes other people pursue. “No matter what craft beverage you love, leave room for others,” she urges. “Just because you love cider doesn’t mean don’t try mead. Just because you love mead doesn’t mean don’t try beer. Oh my God, you’re missing out!”
Follow Wehrloom Honey & Meadery on Instagram and their website.
What’s Going On
Last week, I took over food news at San Diego Magazine! I’m going to be writing a couple of stories each week, and you can see what I’ve been working on here. One week in and already I broke the news that the iconic Tijuana taco shop Tacos El Franc is opening their first U.S. location, plus a new Nobu and a lil’ section of my faves called Beth’s Bites. I got my start in food writing long before I got my first paying freelance gig in 2015, so this is a really nice full circle moment for me.
What I’m Reading
Honestly, I’ve been really bad at getting to my stack of books lately, but I have been enjoying Fuchsia Dunlop’s latest book Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food. Korean, Japanese, Sichuan… all my personal favorite cuisines come from Asia, so learning more about Chinese gastronomy has been fascinating so far. Check it out on Bookshop.org (and see all Prohibitchin’ recommendations here as well).
Book Stuff, Because Of Course
From my book’s release in September to CiderCon in January, I hit the road pretty hard and am just coming up for air. Now, instead of sprinting, I’m transitioning to a marathon approach, taking opportunities as they arise rather than relentlessly chasing them. That being said, if you’d like to leave a review, please do—they are extremely helpful (and they’re the one thing I don’t have to write myself!)
Do you know of a woman or non-binary person working in beverage alcohol who hasn’t seen the spotlight—and should? Nominate them for a future feature!
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