5-20-25 Tonight we're hanging out with Joe and Tricia Marshall, owner of Lily Belle Meads in Lancaster, NY. This husband and wife team are kicking it outside Buffalo with their meads!
Joe and Tricia's journey into mead was gradual but Tricia definitely led the charge on it. In 2004 Tricia got Joe a home brewing beer kit for his 26th birthday and got herself a winemaking kit for his 26th birthday!
She made wines, Joe made beers. Tricia's personal goal was to make a delicious blueberry wine. She wasn't happy with the results, so she did some research and found that she could replace the white sugar in the wine must with honey. Well,, that changed everything and she never went back to making wine again. It was all mead from then on. Tricia won an amatuer award for one of her meads, that started all this.
Joe was home brewing with a group and they had plans of a brewery but none of them would pull the trigger. Tricia’s meads were great, but they were standard strength or higher…she wanted to start selling them but Joe just couldn’t see how when it took so long for them to make.
Then in 2012 or so she started making some 9-10% abv meads and it got Joe thinking…why couldn’t they make meads that were more like beers along with the honey wine style ones? From there on in it was a lot of 1 gallon experimental batches for the next 2-3 years as they developed a business plan. They incorporated in April of 2014.
In 2016, Joe and Tricia got their commercial license and started selling at the various farmer's markets. It was at an indoor Farmer’s Market that they met John and Cathy Cimperman from 42N Brewing Company in nearby East Aurora NY and they asked if Joe and Tricia like to be part of the Full Circle Fest. That led to another brew festival and from there it was a whirlwind and they opened their tasting room on W, Main St. in Lancaster NY on Sept 23, 2017. Lancaster is about 20 minutes east of Buffalo NY. Go Bills! (Go Lions! - Vicky)
Lilly Belle was the first meadery in Erie County and was embraced by the local craft beer scene where Joe and Tricia found niched out their place and eventually took their 7-8% session meads down to 5% and that has been a game changer for them. They use a variety of yeasts, including wine and beer styles, and they are not shy to play around with flavors. They can turn around session meads in 2-3 weeks and most traditionals and melomels in 2-3 months. They also do some bochet's and those are 2-3 months as well.
They have expanded their food menu and kitchen operations, added more space and entertainment options in the taproom, they expanded production capacity by 5x and probably the biggest change was how much Mead we package in bottles and cans. Their initial model was to sell more by the glass in our taproom but that all changed with Covid. Covid was the biggest obstacle they had no way of predicting. The world is "back to normal" in many ways but the 2 years of Covid changed customer habits, wants, needs and expectations and they've been evolving to meet all of these ever since. They've also entered a National Mead Competition the past 2 years and taken 2nd place overall and last year 1st place overall.
Tricia started her career at Roswell Park Cancer Institute as a floor nurse, then moved onto Research Nursing, onto Assistant Corporate Compliance Officer then Senior Quality Analyst. She stepped away in 2015 to put time into growing Lilly Belle Meads, but continued to work part-time jobs. During the pandemic, she found herself working a med-surg floor at BGH. Such an eye opening experience to witness how the pandemic rocked the healthcare system. She spent 2 years full time at the meadery but now finds herself back at Roswell, in a job that is 80% remote thanks to the pandemic. Joe's current role is Budget Compliance Specialist in the Clinical Trials Office and he loves it!
Joe was a Special Education Preschool Teacher for Gateway-Longview...