We're buzzing.
A new bar — serving honey-based cocktails and meads — is opening in a former railway station ticket office in Peckham, next month.
It's from the (hive) mind behind Gosnells, London's only meadery, which produces the fermented honey drink from an industrial unit in Peckham. The brand is now expanding its repertoire with Gosnells Upstairs at Coal Rooms, a 40-seater bar in the former ticket office at Peckham Rye station — an ideal location for a drink or two when train delays are bringing you out in hives.
The restored Victorian building is already home to carnivorous restaurant Coal Rooms, which will provide a small menu of rotating dishes for its new neighbour. Said menu includes Peckham Fatboy potatoes (a nod to this local tale), Ogleshild cheese from Somerset, beef fat mayo, and crispy onions.
Meads will be available to sample in flights of four or five, a combination of vintage serves and flavoured offerings. It's well worth (honey)combing your way through the menu for flavours including pink hibiscus, salted, hopped, barrel-aged and gooseberry, as well as alcohol-free meads. Come the summer, iced versions will be available.
We're all abuzz to try some of the cocktails too, created using the various flavours that exist naturally in honey.
If you're bee-witched by all this talk of honey, you'll be able to sign up for mead masterclasses, where you can try meads from all over the world, as well as mead cocktail evenings, and mead paired suppers, where each drink will be paired with a dish from Coal Rooms.
Tours of the Gosnells Meadery will take place every Saturday priced at £15, including a tasting flight back at The Upstairs.
Tom Gosnell, the worker bee who founded Gosnells, said:
This is an exciting moment for us, the chance to demonstrate our meads in the heart of Peckham alongside great British dishes... We are really putting Mead on the map nationally, and we want to show the amazing range of flavours, textures and alcoholic strengths made possible by beautiful and ecologically significant bees.
OK, we'll stop with the bee puns now because you know what? They really sting.
Gosnells Upstairs at Coal Rooms, 11a Station Way, Peckham, SE15 4RX opens on 8 March 2019. Opening hours: 5-10pm Wednesday & Thursday, 4-10pm Friday, and 12-10pm Saturday.
