French-born winemaker Louis Costa has spent more than a decade reinventing one of the world’s oldest alcoholic drinks. Darren Bridge visits Aurum Mead to discover how Northern Rivers honey, scientific curiosity and a passion for fine wine are combining to create something entirely new.

“Aurum means ‘gold’ in Latin, so everything we do here is with honey, no grapes,” says Louis. Long before grapes were cultivated for wine, people were fermenting honey and water to make mead. These locally made wines are not sweet, simple medieval swill. They are, by some accounts, world-class varieties with a complexity and sophistication to rival anything on the Australian market.

The concept for Aurum Mead was born 12 years ago when Louis Costa was working for Stone & Wood Brewery as one of their main brewers and recipe creators.

Louis was born and bred in Bordeaux and began making wine at the tender age of 11 with his grandfather. He still has his own vineyard back home in France and manages it from Australia, returning annually to harvest the grapes and prepare the wine. Now settled in the Northern Rivers, Louis says he began to miss the process of bottling and ageing wine, and the magic of making something that gets better in the bottle.

He soon discovered the Northern Rivers’ capacity for honey production. “The wider Byron Bay area has amazing potential. The honey here is probably amongst the best in the world for complexity, purity and volume. The bees here have access to flowers all year round, so they are producing honey late in the year.” The very nature of honey production is sustainable and beneficial to local pollination, so it’s a great fit for this area.

Making quality wines from honey is a new frontier and Louis refers to science through research, trial and error, and his extensive body of knowledge. It has taken over a decade for this process to evolve, experimenting with different yeast and fermentation protocols. Louis has developed his own strain of yeast which works hand in hand with the honey for perfect fermentation, resulting in a complex refined wine that complements the honey without the sweetness of old-fashioned mead.

Louis says his favourite honey is Manuka, well known for its health benefits and antibacterial medicinal properties, and it features prominently in most of his products (see The Bangalow Herald June 2026 edition for our story on our local Australian Manuka Honey).

But what do they taste like?

Louis treated my lunch companion and I to a tasting of his flagship wines, masterfully paired with gourmet hors d’oeuvres, which is available for you to enjoy on a Saturday at their pop-up cellar door in Newrybar Hall. First up was the sparkling white, paired wonderfully with smoked salmon, chive and lemon with crème fraîche on rye bread. This wonderful crisp sparkling wine drank like a prosecco, but not a sweet prosecco. It had a crisp, fresh finish more akin to a dry champagne style. There are notes of honey, yes, but if you told me this was a traditional grape wine, I would believe you. Such is Louis’ dedication and mastery of his craft.

Louis’ enthusiasm and volume of experience is evident and, as we progressed through the tastings, it became abundantly clear that this range can hold its own on any menu or wine list. Next on the list was a summery sparkling rosé, followed by the flagship white (voted one of the Top 20 Drinks of the Year in the Australian Financial Review), another wonderful dry rosé, a Beaujolais-style wine, a very interesting guava wine, and the list went on.

Cheers to Aurum Mead and Louis Costa, an amazing host and inventor of a whole new direction in local winemaking.