11 a.m. on a Wednesday doesn’t exactly scream “time to drink,” but customers are already clamoring outside the door at All Wise Meadery in Williamsburg. A shaggy mop of blonde hair pops out the door. “Sorry, we’re closed guys!” he says. “But come back later, okay?”
Their eyes grow wide, and despite the disappointment, they smile. They’ve got half of what they came here for: a glimpse at Dylan Sprouse.
Well, “mazer” Sprouse is more like it. A few months ago, the former Disney Channel star and his two friends opened All Wise in the same complex as the William Vale Hotel. It’s gotten a lot of press—in part because of who Sprouse is, but also because, uh, mead? That drink from centuries ago?
You’d think it might be strange to see the former The Suite Life of Zack & Cody star milling around vats and tinkering with bottles. But he’s so at ease, you suddenly can’t imagine him anywhere else in the world.
Sprouse started making mead when he was teenager, in part because his face was too recognizable to sneak in anywhere. “Like any other 16-year-old, I wanted to drink with my friends. We couldn‘t go to 7/11 and get some older person to buy it, so I decided that we may as well make it,” he says. Why mead? “Because it‘s a lot easier than beer.”
So he set up shop in his parent’s garage. His first batch had too much sugar, and he admits it was “gross, disgusting.” But Sprouse was hooked—both on making the beverage, and on learning its history. He can rattle off its Scandinavian ties, feudal laws on honey, and the effects of the Roman Empire. Sure, he had a few more misses, like a batch of garlic mead he affectionately refers to as “Stinky Boi” (he still defends that “poured over chicken, it’s f*cking delicious”). Eventually, though, he perfected his own recipe, and now, his own brand.
As he grew older, Sprouse says he became a more selective actor. Which was good, because he was only taking jobs that he wanted. But he was also bored. So he thought, why not do this mead thing full time? With the guidance of famed New York restaurateur Andrew Carmellini, he opened All Wise in partnership with his two friends, Doug Brochu and Matt Kwan. Now he’s found himself the famous face of the budding mead movement.
