Goldberry Common puts fresh spins on ancient mead

All that is gold does not glitter, including the beverages being brewed by Rochester’s newest mead makers, Gina Marcucci and Abram Krause. They’ve started a new mead company called Goldberry Common. “Mead is possibly the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, dating back at least 20,000 years and existing in ancient cultures across the globe,” says Krause.

That hasn’t stopped him and Marcucci from brewing new flavors into the meads they craft. Some of their mead varieties include cranberry spice, blueberry cheesecake, apple pie, nectarine and strawberry rhubarb. ADVERTISEMENT “Abram and I had decided we both wanted to do something different, something outside of our day jobs,” says Marcucci.



“Something to satiate our creative sides that required hands-on work and would have the ability to bring the community together. After a few ideas were rattled, we landed on mead as something we had a mutual taste for and could see a reality of being great at.” Marcucci was born and raised in Anoka, Minnesota, and moved to Minneapolis and Tennessee after attending Winona State University.

She moved back to Rochester in 2018 for what she thought would be a short stay but found friends and a community, deciding then to stay in town. Krause grew up in a small town in southern Wisconsin. He bounced around from Madison to Ukraine and the Pacific Northwest after college and moved back to Rochester to reconnect with friends and family after the isolation of the pandemic.

“Rochester offered the perfect combination of being big enough to satiate my social appetite and rural enough to stretch my legs and get outside,” says Krause. “When I moved to Rochester, Gina and I reconnected after first becoming friends in college,” says Krause. The pair attended the 10-week 2024 Colliders Foundation CO.

STARTERS Program to develop a business strategy for their proposed Goldberry Common mead-making company. “We ended up winning the Collider Cup that involved pitching our business plan to local business owners,” says Marcucci. “We’ve been slowly working on growing and building off that plan since.

” Krause first got interested in making mead through his childhood fascination with bugs. “I could watch ants or bees for hours,” he says. “I had a lot of exposure to the beekeeping hobby through my dad and my grandpa who both had hives.

As an adult I was drawn to mead for both its historical significance and the role it plays in modern culture at Renaissance fairs and other niche cultural events.” Mead is made by fermenting honey and water. The fermentation process can take several months and then eventually fruits, spices, and other flavors are added.

“Depending on the flavor profile I am aiming for, I will use different strains of yeast to achieve the best outcome,” explains Krause. The mead is also aged for at least six months once it is bottled. ADVERTISEMENT “Abram and I have very different palates, and we constantly take each other’s opinions into consideration, which ends up offering a wide range of tastes and ideas that go into each flavor,” says Marcucci.

Krause says they create mead that appeals both to those who like sweeter and drier varieties. Krause says that making mead requires both discipline and creativity. “Creating alcohol is the easy part,” he says.

“Some of my earliest batches were strong enough to float an ax head but were not very merciful to the palate. Achieving the right alcohol content and flavor profile involves a thorough understanding of the process and a lot of patience, but there is still substantial room for creativity.” Marcucci and Krause named their mead-making endeavor after a minor character from fantasy novels in The Lord of The Rings trilogy.

Goldberry is the beautiful and perpetually youthful golden-haired wife of Tom Bombadil, a mysterious and jolly character. The couple offers adventuring hobbits a warm hearth and safe harbor from the daunting Old Forest in the novel. “Our common goal is to bring (the) community together,” says Marcucci.

“To provide a warm and cozy place, and product, that people can join together to enjoy, similar to the refuge offered by Goldberry and her husband. In other words, we aspire to be hobbits.” The pair are still working through the process of getting their mead licensed.

One of their biggest obstacles is finding and funding a brewing space that meets the licensing requirements. As they’ve worked to get their mead-making operation off the ground, Goldberry Common have offered it as samples during events such as the Sertoma 700 Club’s annual Wine & Spirit Tasting event. They plan to offer samples of their mead during Game Haven’s Castle Con, a gaming event, on Jan.

24-25, 2025. Goldberry Common is also creating candles with scents that pair to their mead flavors. They’ve featured these pairings at a recent Small Business Saturday hosted by the Rochester Farmers Market.

ADVERTISEMENT “Our plan is to be more involved with the Farmers Market going forward this coming year,” says Marcucci. The schedule of upcoming Goldberry Common tasting events can be found at goldberrycommon.com.

“We are looking to book any and all opportunities for a tasting from corporate events to markets to personal events,” says Marcucci. A friend in mead is a friend indeed, and Marcucci and Krause are looking forward to continuing their mead-making friendship and hopefully creating more opportunities for community as they go forward. “Wherever this endeavor ends up,” says Krasue, “it has been incredible to see how supportive the Rochester community is of new businesses.

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