Nate Cohen’s honey hooch

Photo: Neighbors of the Wasatch Back // Jill Baker.

If necessity is the mother of invention, boredom is the bro of booze, busying idle under-30 hands to brew Earth’s oldest libation: mead. What is mead? It’s somel, of course. And if that doesn’t clear things up for you, then you, like me, live beneath Park City’s nearest rock (which is likely still, at minimum, $2.3 million dollars without ski access). Thankfully, Nate Cohen, owner of BullyRookCo., a micro-mead-esque distillery in Salt Lake City’s Sugar House neighborhood, and Park City native, is prepared to illuminate senior generations (yes, millennials, you qualify) on what it means to transform the nectar of the gods into a vaporous swill (alcohol, that is) to be sipped, swirled, and savored by local aficionados whose preferred terroir derives its peculiarities from the buzz of Kaysville’s blossoms and bees. 

But—alliteration aside, while this historic honey-hooch (I can’t stop now!) has been made for millennials—somel, as it’s known today, is actually a portmanteau. Portmanteau? Is that a town in Key West, you ask? No, but it should be. Actually, it is the official description for the incredible combination of words that together gave us pop-culture icons like Bennifer and Brangelina, as well as the terms “hangry” and “chillax.” Somel combines the Latin words solum, meaning “only,” and mel, meaning “honey.” Or, in simpler non-TMZ terms, “It’s fermented honey,” Nate says, plainly, but the mystique of this drink has not yet left me. 

For the moms in the room, I’d like to take a poll. Raise your hand if you routinely offer your spoiled food (both produce and jars) to your children to play with. As a measure of transparency, not a single hand went up in my house. But if you had been a guest at Trudy and Scott Cohen’s home in the 2010s as the couple was raising three boys in Park City’s Willow Creek neighborhood where the Cohens’ residence “[was] one of the first houses built,” remembers Nate, “which was great because we got to play in all the construction sites while the other homes were going up” you may have witnessed the lightbulb moment when Nate, at the transformative age of eight, was introduced to the innovation of elixirs. “Every few weeks, or months, my mom would be like, ‘Hey, this stuff has gone bad in the kitchen, and we can either throw it away, or I can give it to the kids, and they can do whatever they want with it.’ So we’d make potions and mix stuff together and just make amalgamations, the three of us just out in the backyard cooking. It would obviously all just be tossed in the trash at the end, but it was something fun for kids to do, to mix up a potion, especially since we were all into Harry Potter.” 

The Potterhead in me wants to shout, “Expelliarmus!”—but the mom in me wants to take Trudy to lunch and thank her for her bravery and leadership (and maybe pick her brain) on how and why she trusted three young boys alone with organic matter in her high-mountain backyard without the overwhelming fear of needing to re-landscape. Maybe it’s just my OCD talking, but the mere suggestion of setting my own children free to “concoct” conjures hours of imagery of me alone with a shovel, a mop, and a podcast. (Okay, maybe I do see where she was headed!) Either way, it’s an honorable “hats off” to Trudy. That’s some top-shelf parenting.

But what Trudy may have not yet understood, as she handed her kids rubbery carrots and old mayonnaise, was the impact this simple hands-off moment had on her son’s future in brewing. One could argue (and I will) that it was this formidable experience that laid the groundwork-awe for Nate’s now-career at Beehive Distillery as one of the brand’s onsite distillers. Not to mention the source of inspiration for his own bevvy brand––BullyRookCo., also made at Beehive Distillery––one of only two mead (I mean, somel) distillers in Utah. “I could have done another whiskey company that tasted like another whiskey,” says Nate, with a punctuated laugh that tells me his product’s rarity is neither a boast nor a blunder, “but if I was going to create my own drink, I knew I wanted to source everything local. Just like wine has terroir, honey has flowers. You can taste if it’s made with wildflowers, or cloves, or if the hives were placed near an apple orchard. I also think part of the fun of being a smaller producer is the freedom to experiment. To say, ‘The 2022 tasted like apple, the 2024 tasted like sage, and so on.’ Large producers don’t have that creativity; they’re devoted to consistency.” 

And while copies might earn you loyal fans, they may also earn you a very simple cease-and-desist, as was the case for Nate with his company’s early moniker, Ernest Co. “My middle name is Ernest,” he admits, “but a few months in, we had to peel off every label and start again. Apparently, the Ernest Hemingway estate owns a distillery in Florida, and I wasn’t interested in paying to fight it.” Henceforth, BullyRookCo. a Shakespearian name referring to a lively and somewhat troublemaking companion (what we would call a “drinking buddy” today) was born. Bully to Ernie.

But Nate doesn’t strike me as the fighting type, at least not based on both his choice in cocktail––all of which is sourced from Elden Foods farms in Kaysville, Utah, responsible for delivering raw, unfiltered, 100%-glyphosate-free honey with strict standards for quality and contamination––and the admission of his family’s weekly Survivor parties hosted by, who else, the infamous Trudy Cohen of Willow Creek (also a retired Intermountain nurse), whose talents never end and who, according to Nate, also is the family chef and resident “incredible” mother. “I think my mom and dad both taught me a lot,” says this 29-year-old, “and it’s very hard. I mean, it’s always hard as a kid, to say what exactly your parents have taught you, but at the end of the day, it’s probably everything. I wouldn’t be here without them…they are responsible for 80–90 percent of what I am, so I’m always grateful.” (Seriously, Trudy, how do we raise kids who grow up to love us and admit these things to random journalists? Asking for a friend…)

All parental desperation aside, I’m struck by Nate’s humility and respect for his family, who seem to me now larger than life. And while I find his business novel, and its future sweet, my mind circles to an early confession that feels unassumingly honest and central to his personal ethos. “It’s all just a distraction from boredom,” admits Nate, dryly, “but I realized if I just put a little effort into something, whether that’s helping a buddy move, or my job, or this business idea I have, it’s always rewarding, no matter what. And maybe ‘boredom’ is the wrong word—maybe having a goal is a better description. But it’s important to have something to work towards.” I’m sure the silver-sneakers society is smiling at his Gen Z profundity with that grandparent grin I resented in my early twenties but now seek out like a crazed moth desperate for spark of validation as I round 40. Nate, however, doesn’t seem desperate for much, which feels ode to his familial foundation. Or, perhaps there’s one more topic we discuss that’s essential to raising good humans: faith. 

“I’m a cashew,” says Nate with another laugh, one I imitate this time as if I know exactly what he means, but quickly follow with a “Wait, what?” Turns out that no, Nate isn’t a nut, at least not in the self-deprecating idiot sense. “I’m half-Jewish, half-Catholic,” he says, which I follow with an “Ohhhhhh” and a series of curious questions about what it means to grow up between two religions that, despite their central theme, remain in opposition around certain key elements. I take no sides in this conversation other than to proclaim that while I get why he might remain currently “undecided” on the idea of a higher power at his age, despite observing all High Holidays on both sides, there is a reason that grandma and grandpa (and parents of teenaged six-year-olds—again, speaking for a friend) must seek refuge in something larger than ourselves. Which I begin to correlate may be the subtext of his philosophy on boredom. Life must have meaning, he agrees, but whether that meaning is imposed or inherent is for us to decide, but an effort must be made to find a source of joy. Earth, however, with all its earthly struggles, can be a rocky site from which to mine for a mission. “There are teachings that are very valuable, that all religions have,” agrees Nate. “I think that was the nice thing growing up with both Catholicism and Judaism. I got to see that everyone has teachings that are very valuable, that are worth listening to, and living your life by. But I don’t necessarily think it means I have to believe in that God. It’s not necessarily that I don’t believe. Let’s just say it would be a very nice surprise.” 

The irony of Nate’s BullyRookCo. honey-made spirit and the Promised Land are not lost on me, but faith is not form-fitting—it must be tailored through time. Fortunately, it is my firm belief that entrepreneurship, with all of its lessons and demands, is the fastest route to a conclusion. In the meantime, my mind wanders to earthly considerations and that captivating town on Florida’s fictional coast. Did Brangelina ever get hangry and want to chillax with Bennifer on a premium bottle of BullyRookCo. somel? 

The world may never know.