Old Portland Haunt reborn as Medieval Wyrd Meadery and Bar
There is a fantastical new bar in Portland where sexy instagram models dress in chainmail bikinis sipping honey-wine with scruffy leather clad cosplayers dressed like they came off the set of an X-rated Game of Thrones knockoff. No, this isn’t adult D & D fantasy fiction, it’s a real new Mead hall that opened last week in a dark fire lit basement in one of Portland’s oldest former restaurants.
@the.rebecca.rose models with Wyrd Mead
Mead, the ancient fermented beverage of the norsemen just won’t die. Through its thousands of years history, the first fermented beverage known to humanity has had its ups and downs and had hit a rough patch in the pacific northwest but has come roaring back. In the past few years we lost Oregon Mead and Cider, Nectar Creek Meadery, Fringe Meadery, and the Mead Market. Before that Blue Dog Mead made a big splash with low abv carbonated meads but quickly crashed and burned. But just like the legendary Sæhrímnir, it appears we will all be sipping honey-wine in Valhalla.
The pacific northwest Mead scene has never completely died out: Since 2013 Viking Braggot Brewery has been specializing in beer-mead hybrids called Braggots in Eugene, Oregon. Mac Mead Hall has called McMinnville, OR home since 2017. More recently Author Mead Company launched in Vancouver, Washington in 2018. Steamworks Meadery opened in Medford, Oregon in 2019. World famous Schramm’s Head Mead came to Washington just this summer.And earlier this year 2 Towns Cider resurrected Nectar Creek Mead like Helgi and his doomed valkyrie lover.
Portland’s latest foray into Mead is straight out of middle earth and feels so authentic you will think you have stumbled in to The Prancing Pony. This is Wyrd Leather & Mead, founded as a tiny retail only operation in Milwaukie, Oregon in 2018, Wyrd is now calling the basement bar of the historic Old Town Crier building at 4515 SE 41st Ave, Portland, OR 97202 home.
The “Ye Olde Towne Crier”’was a Portland dining institution for more than 40 years from it’s founding in 1953 to it’s closure in 1996. The actual building was built in 1927 and it’s full of all the hallmarks of old Portland, from the weirdly crypt like space to eroding brick, wood beams, odd carvings and retro design that have been lovingly restored by the Wyrd Leather & Mead team.
“Getting the Olde Towne Crier space was perfect as a starting point for what we envisioned growing into as it was a colonial style bar with log walls and bar space and just an overall aesthetic very fitting for an old style mead hall type bar,” says Wyrd co-owner Douglas Wingate.
Wyrd was founded by Travis Sigler and Tayler Toll, two friends that were really into gaming and lore who decided to get into meadmaking because it was too difficult to find in stores locally. Tayler went on to take a meadmaking course at UC Davis and Travis got really into custom leatherworking. Their original shop in Milwaukie was primarily a place for hobbyists to find niche medieval and fantasy items like bracelets, belts, wristbands and even the occasional vambraces and greaves, but they soon began making very small batch meads that would sell out quickly. This is all the sorts of stuff you would find on a TV show like Vikings where one of Sigler’s bracers actually ended up in scenes. Through their extensive visits to comic book and cosplay conventions, the founders of Wyrd developed a loyal following that includes minor celebrities from geek culture like actors from the Harry Potter movies and Avatar the Last Airbender.
After a successful run in the Portland suburbs, Sigler and Toll wanted to expand on their growing fanbase and move closer to the heart of the culture. That’s where Douglas Wingate came in, as the founder of one of the only mead dedicated taprooms in Mac Mead Hall in Mcminnville he brings experience and knowledge of the mead world to the table. Wingate joined Wyrd Leather and Mead as a co-owner in 2019 and will now help oversee the purchasing and bar and food programs at the hall.
The leatherworking and small scale craftmanship of local artisans and LARPers will be a major part of Wyrd’s retail component taking up the south corner of their basement pub. From a consignment area that wouldn’t be out of place in Hyrule, Wyrd crafts their own novelty gear and features everything from local honey, to pagan earrings and drinking horns. The pub space is also decorated with display only items that are both made in-house and collectible armor that could be made from mithril and swords like something the Kingslayer would be swinging. The leatherworking and consignment based side of the operation will be open in the days from noon to 8pm Tuesday-Saturday before the mead hall opens at Friday-Sunday from 5-10pm.
The pub side area of Wyrd Mead hall is all old timber, hand carved wood and cobbled stone with a newly finished bar top and extensive selection of bottles. The booths look like something out of Excalibur and the floating tables look like they were salvaged from the Horse Brass. A massive roaring stone fireplace and the strange face of a creepy cabin in the woods along the northeast corner of the dungeon-like space adds to the lore that the building is haunted.
It’s hard to imagine that Toll could find room in this basement cellar space for fermentation, but in actuality they have turned a back hall room that used to function as a dish washing station for the pub into an expansion of their previous production levels. The current current mead output is made with 2 x 700L fermenters and 3 x 200L fermenters, but as the restart of meadmaking begins they expect to increase their output by four times.
“Despite the impact of COVID-19 and only being able to sell by the bottle we can barely keep or mead in stock. Several of our recent melomel (mead +fruit) have sold out in a matter of days after bottling. That increased capacity would allow us to potentially be producing up to about 4000 bottles of mead per month,” says Wingate.
Wyrd’s own meads are traditional in that they are uncarbonated and made with only natural ingredients with honey and local fruit and range from 12-14% ABV. With their expanded capacity Toll hopes to break into producing beer-mead hybrids called Braggots and the carbonated session meads that are becoming popular on draft. In the meantime Wyrd will pour draft of lower abv fizzy meads from Corvallis’s Nectar Creek and bottle pours from fellow meaderies around the pacific northwest and abroad like Dansk Mjod from Denmark. And there will be a small but well prepared food menu of charcuteries boards of meats and cheeses, breads, and soups to compliment the mead.
Wyrd takes up only the bottom floor of the Old Town Crier building, on the first floor Ari Moss is building out the 13th Moon Gravity Well beer bar and bottle shop next to a new cafe. Food trucks are slated to rotate in to the on-site parking lot and will serve southeast Portland’s Woodstock neighborhood.
WYRD LEATHER & MEAD
Retail hours for bottle sales, merchandise, and artists on consignment:
Tues - Saturday 12 PM to 8 PM
Mead Hall hours for drinks and food:
Friday - Sunday 5 PM to 10 PM, minors allowed until 8pm.