Hello!

Making the first batch of Tineo Mead

Cochrane, Chile. 12/30/25

Hello — and thanks for being here.

I’m Chris, the founder of Tineo Mead: a craft beverage company centered on great honey, flawless fermentation, and growing the mead lovers community.

Most people hear “mead” and think Vikings and strong 10–14% ABV honey wine. We love the history, but Tineo is focused on session-strength meads or “hydromels”: 5–7% ABV, cold, refreshing, lightly carbonated, and made for the outdoors. Think: after a long hike, on the golf course, or whatever gets you outside.

Over the past year I’ve traveled through Chile and the United States, meeting mead makers and learning the craft hands-on. What stood out was the obsession with detail, clean ingredients, and the creativity being brought to the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage. That’s the bar I’m chasing with Tineo.

Tineo will be based in Sonoma County, California, with inspiration pulled straight from southern Chile, places where nature still feels powerful, raw, and honest. That’s the feeling I want in the product: simple, intentional, and done right.

Right now, Tineo is in the build phase:

· Forming the company and getting the paperwork moving

· Refining recipes + fermentation technique (including some exciting use of wild Patagonian yeast)

· Sourcing honey and ingredients, with the goal of working with producers in California and southern Chile

Tineo is named after the tineo tree, native to Chile and found from south of Santiago down into the Aysén region of Patagonia: resilient, slow-growing, and deeply rooted. That’s what I want this to be, a company that grows patiently, stays close to its community, and makes something genuinely worth coming back to.

This website and our newsletter is where I’ll share the build as it happens: experiments, decisions, lessons learned, and eventually the first releases.

If you’re reading this, you’re early, and I’m grateful.

More soon,
Chris