pune banking on peoples appetite for sweet drinks pune residents rohan rehani and nitin vishwas are set to introduce mead or honeywine in the city soonafter obtaining the necessary licences in september the duos brand moonshine meadery is ready to roll out various types of mead at the pune food and beverage fb marketmead was a beverage that has been consumed for centuries across asia europe and scandinavian countries however while mead continued to be brewed in scandinavian nations due to a shortage of grapes it disappeared from asia we launched our brand in june this year apparently a new meadery has also been set up in thailand rehani saidshedding light on the journey of moonshine meadery he said the idea clicked him in 2014 initially when i tried my hand at brewing mead it turned out horrible since then after continuous attempts the mead started tasting better we made our friends try it and they asked for more it was then that we decided to explore the commercial viability of mead we were thinking of launching a small outlet for pune only however considering that indians like sweet beverages we thought that the venture could be made national he addedrehani said despite the completion of the set up in 2016 they got the licence only in september 2017 as the law had to be amended to include meads in the craft wine category now that we have our licence we will start production with an initial 5000litre capacity our set up has three tanks including one for carbonation we are set to commence bottling within the coming week and are only waiting for the finalization of labels he saidthe duo plans to focus on business to business b2b sales initially instead of retail we are looking at tying up with five restaurants each in pune and mumbai where our meads will be available oneonone engagement and the option to try the product will generate greater awareness about the product we are going to start with two types apple mead which is made by fermenting apple juice and honey and coffee mead that is made by dunking crushed coffee beans in traditional mead the meads will be priced at rs 180 per pint rehani saidafter launching in pune and mumbai we will work on fine tuning the mead and solving any problems that may arise he added