Tucked away in a shopping center off Gunn Highway in Odessa is Pye Road Meadworks.
The owners say it's a mix between beer and wine, featuring the best of both worlds.
Mead is essentially a honey wine, and they specialize in a sweet dessert style, and it's all (99.5%) made with local honey.
"We add lots of different fun flavors like raspberries and strawberries and cherries and vanilla cinnamon. But mead dates back thousands of years. People claim it's the oldest beverage which is surprising that people don't know what it is because it goes back so far. But mead can be anything from very dry like a white wine to very, very sweet. We're on the sweeter side. Again, using local honey, we love to feature that, so we want to make sure you get some of that sweet flavor," explained the McDonoughs.
They've been open for two years, and in that time they earned themselves worldwide recognition and plenty of accolades.
"Explaining to people what we do and what we create and how it's different from wine and how it's different from beer was our biggest challenge, and it's a challenge that we're still encountering. We have new folks that walk in all the time coming off the street, and I don't like wine, I don't like beer. And I'm like, you're my favorite customer because you are going to love what we do," explained Matt McDonough, who owns Pye Road with his wife, Deb.
Everything is made from scratch right there in the store.
Deb and Matt started the journey as home brewers but quickly saw growth and a demand for what they do.
"This is a great community. This is that type of community where people come in, and they sit at the bar, and they may not know people, and by the time they leave, they have three new best friends. So it's really nice. We try really hard to make people feel welcome," explain the McDonoughs. "But it's the Odessa community, and it's the people here that make people feel welcome. And it's great, because we'll get really busy on a Saturday, and new people will come in and sit down, and we're, you know, behind the bar trying to serve other people, and one of our customers will be like, okay, so go ahead and take a look at numbers one through six. And they'll give this field that we usually, and they'll give their recommendations, and then by the time we get over there, the customer knows what they want."
Click here to find out more about Pye Road and what they offer.
