Geelong’s Three Horn Meadery Crowned Australia’s Best — Again

Mead masters make their mark in national competition.

Geelong’s mead-making marvels, Three Horn, have done it again, sweeping the Australian National Mead Competition for the second year running and taking home a glittering haul of ten medals from ten entries. That’s a perfect scorecard — and a pretty spectacular moment for local owners and mates, Zachary Lodge and Sam Lamanna.

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Still riding the high of their back-to-back victory, the pair say the win hasn’t quite sunk in.
“We’re blown away that we were able to win two years in a row,” co-owner Sam Lamanna says. “We’ve worked hard to perfect our methods batch-by-batch across the years and the medals we won this year are a testament to that.”

Three Horn’s success has long been rooted in their obsession with top-shelf Aussie ingredients. Native honeys, local fruits, botanicals and the relationships they’ve built with nearby growers all play a starring role in the glass.

“The huge popularity of our Australian native series has really highlighted how important local and native ingredients are for creating the vibrant flavours in our meads,” co-owner Zachary Lodge says.

The two began their journey in peak pandemic times — one a homebrewer entering local comps, the other a beekeeper — teaming up to brew their first mead in a Bannockburn shed. Fast-forward a few short years and Three Horn has evolved into a fully fledged commercial operation with bottles appearing on shelves and in restaurants nationwide.

Despite mead being one of the world’s oldest drinks, the duo are determined to give it a thoroughly modern twist.

“We love the Nordic and Greek historical roots of mead, but we also wanted to create a more modern take on the drink by experimenting with different fermentation, infusion, and brewing styles to create something people love to drink,” Zachary says.

That experimental streak has produced some seriously fun flavours: Strawberry Jam (complete with homemade jam cooked by the team), the bold Vikings Blood, the sunset-hued Australian Sunset, and their newest drop, Pinot Pyment — crafted with grapes from their own Geelong vineyard, Rowsley Fault.

With a cellar door in the works and ambitions already set on a 2026 title hat-trick, Three Horn’s meteoric rise is only gaining momentum.

Find out more about Three Horn here.