Photos by Kayla Scarberry
What started out as tinkering, making just one gallon of wine at a time in Tavarus and Kamika Perry’s home kitchen and basement in 2016, is now Perry Vine, a maker of up to 900 bottles of mead, hard cider and wine at a time—that’s 6 barrels worth!
“I started with a bunch of strawberries and just so happened to have a lot of honey because I’m a tea drinker. I got a really big Tupperware, poked holes in the top of it, and got some bread yeast,” says Tavarus, who does all the production, while his wife Kamika handles the branding and admin. “I was just poppin’ lids. I thought poking holes in the lids would be good enough, but it just swells up and boom!”
Tavarus, a South Bend, Indiana, native, has learned a lot over nearly 10 years of brewing and doesn’t blow up bottles and Tupperware like he used to.
“I’ve learned a lot about quality control and temp control,” says Tavarus with the sound of CO2 (the byproduct of yeast converting sugar into alcohol) bubbling from one of the three tanks behind him. “I’ve taken things very slowly so I could scale properly and make as few mistakes as possible.”
After sharing his brews with family and friends for five years, Kamika encouraged him to attend the 2021 Junior Achievement’s Annual Wine and Beer Festival at Four Winds Field in South Bend. “The line wrapped around the stadium,” he says. People loved his lightly sweet and nuanced flavor offerings so much that he started to think about how to grow this hobby into a real business.
“I like cooking, but don’t want to own a restaurant,” says Tavarus. “What if I made alcohol? It seems challenging enough, the barrier of entry is high, it’s somewhat expensive, also a lot of chemistry involved. I don’t know of a lot of minority businesses in the alcohol industry—it’s unique.”
Perry Vine has a presence at many festivals across the region, including the Fusion Fest, where he offers mead slushies, and Hops & Coaster Drops at Indiana Beach, where his drinks attract a lot of honeybees. “They’re good omens,” says Tavarus. “People at the festival understood, ‘Oh! The bees are here because of the mead.’”
The lines are shorter and the bees fewer at the Perry Vine tasting room that opened in early 2023. On Fridays from 4 to 8pm you can taste some of their most popular flavors: Peach Mead, peachy sweet and mango-colored; Strawberry Lemonade Mead, light orange with just a hint of funk; and Bee Vomit, “I call it my alcoholic cream soda,” says Tavarus, “fresh maple, caramel and vanilla.”
Tavarus is just as fastidious about ingredients as he is about technique. All the honey used in Perry Vine meads comes from Pine Creek Farm in Shipshewana, Indiana, the cider apples come from Michigan, and all the other fruit comes from organic purees. Sweeter meads, like the Peach Mead, take 60 days to ferment, while dryer meads, like the Plum Mead, take about 90 days.
“My favorite is the White Cranberry Wine. It tastes like Christmas in a bottle!” says regular customer Jill Rippy about a flavor that’s released only in the winter.
Perry Vine started at home and has continued as a true family business—Kamika, Tavarus’ niece and his parents help run the register, and their three kids can be spotted hanging out Friday nights. The tasting room can hold five to 10 people, and tables in the atrium seat up to 30.
“Tavarus very much values people’s feedback,” says regular customer Ian Williams. “He’ll be experimenting with something and ask us to try it and give our honest feedback. He’s very friendly, talks to everybody, makes friends. Family is there, and it feels like we’re all a part of it. It’s a very welcoming space to try out new drinks, to come in and meet people, especially for the Black population, it’s a good hang out space to go and network.”
Perry Vine
Tasting Room in the Emporium Building
121 S. Niles Ave Ste. 15
South Bend, IN
Fridays 4–8pm
perryvine.com
Instagram/Facebook: @perryvinewine
Katie Jamieson is a poet, massage therapist, former publisher of Edible Michiana and associate editor of Curl magazine. Find Katie @breath.of.freedom.poetry on Instagram, breathoffreedompoetry.substack.com and breathoffreedommassage.com.
