The Creole Story Behind Zydeco Meadery
Eric Depradine’s Zydeco Meadery is more than a winery; it is a cultural bridge linking Boston, Trinidad, Louisiana, and beyond. From hibiscus mead inspired by his grandmother to apple-raisin recipes rooted in New England, Eric blends history, family, and science into every bottle. His journey is one of resilience, sacrifice, and a deep commitment to preserving Creole heritage through taste.
At the heart of a New England farmer’s market, the crowd gathers around a stall where deep ruby liquid catches the morning light. The drink is hibiscus mead, its tangy-sweet aroma carrying traces of Africa, the Caribbean, and the American South. Behind the table stands Eric Depradine, pouring samples and telling stories of his Trinidadian grandmother, of rice dishes that echo across oceans, of Louisiana parishes where cowboy culture still thrives.
For Eric, mead is more than a drink. It is a living archive that connects Boston to the Bayou, Kansas to the Caribbean, blending history, chemistry, and family into every bottle. His venture, Zydeco Meadery, carries the weight of migration and memory, proving that culture can be preserved in books, music, and taste.
Roots Across Oceans
Eric Depradine’s story begins in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was born in 1983. His mother’s family emigrated from Trinidad, carrying the cultural layers of the Caribbean — French Creole, Carnival traditions, Catholic rituals, and rice dishes like pelau. His father’s family traced their roots to eastern North Carolina. They were part of the Great Migration, the mass movement of African Americans from the South to northern cities between World War I and the 1970s. Eric’s relatives journeyed in 1941, settling in Boston, where they remain today.
Growing up, Eric lived at the crossroads of cultures. He was surrounded by Cape Verdean, Haitian, Trinidadian, and Puerto Rican families in his neighborhood. Each carried their own Creole languages, music, and cuisines. Yet in 1980s Boston, racial segregation still lingered. “They saw me as a Black person, and I saw them as white,” Eric recalls. “I didn’t realize there were different ‘flavors’ within Black culture until I left Massachusetts.”
Discovering Creole Connections
That awakening came at 17, when Eric was accepted to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Moving south shocked the system: slower rhythms, stronger food traditions, and a deep sense of community. But it also felt strangely familiar.
He fell in love with Opelousas, where he and his wife eventually bought their first home. The couple lived in a cul-de-sac near a Catholic church and one of St. Landry Parish’s renowned butcher shops. “You don’t usually hear ‘idyllic’ and ‘Opelousas’ in the same sentence,” Eric laughs, “but for us, it was.”
Food was the first bridge. He compared Trinidad’s pelau to Louisiana’s jambalaya: one-pot rice dishes seasoned with beans, vegetables, and occasionally meat. His daughter teased him that she wished they’d stayed in Opelousas so she could ride horses after school like the neighborhood children. Cowboy culture, he realized, was as much a part of Louisiana’s Creole identity as music or food.
Louisiana also opened Eric’s eyes to the broader Creole world. “It took moving to Lafayette to understand the connections — from Trinidad to Louisiana, from Cape Verde to Haiti. We may be different, but we share many cultural similarities, such as religion, food, and Carnival. It’s all tied back to Africa.”
Later, Eric found echoes of Louisiana’s cowboy culture in Kansas City. “Beef cattle is big business in Kansas, just like cattle has long been part of Louisiana’s western prairies,” he explains. From African-American cowboys in Kansas to Creole cattle traditions in Acadiana, the parallels deepened his sense of how cultures across regions are linked.
“We told ourselves, why can’t we do this in Louisiana?”
A Historian’s Mind, a Chemist’s Hands
At UL Lafayette, Eric studied history and Francophone studies, later returning for a bachelor’s in chemistry. The combination was unlikely, but powerful. History gave him the language to interpret Creole culture; chemistry gave him the tools to experiment. Together, they would shape the future of Zydeco Meadery.
The Dream Ferments
The spark came during Eric’s honeymoon. He and his wife toured Washington State wineries, sipping Rieslings alongside apple pie. “We told ourselves, why can’t we do this in Louisiana?” he recalls.
Back home, they discovered Louisiana’s wine industry was tiny, with just a handful of wineries and limited access to grapes. But honey was abundant and affordable. Eric’s hands landed on a book on mead making, and soon, their Opelousas kitchen turned into a laboratory.
He experimented with fruit from Romero’s Orchard outside New Iberia — figs, muscadines, citrus, and blackberries. Not every batch was a success. “We had a lot of bad wine that oxidized,” he grins. “I used it in cooking. My mother tasted curry chicken one day and asked, ‘Eric, why does this taste like wine?’”
Mistakes became lessons. The oak chip experiment taught him restraint: “Less is best. Once you over-oak, you can’t fix it.” But through trial and error, the dream began to ferment.
From Hobby to Business
The vision of a winery in Opelousas never materialized, and finances and logistics blocked it. But when the family moved to Kansas City, a new opportunity arose.
Eric discovered Highland Community College’s winemaking program, which is part of a national consortium. Classes and access to a wine incubator gave him both technical training and shared equipment. “If it weren’t for Highland, Zydeco Meadery would still be just an idea,” he says.
By 2020, Zydeco Meadery was officially a licensed winery in Kansas. The family bottled, labeled, and sold meads at farmers’ markets, festivals, and art fairs. At the height of the pandemic, they once made almost $3,000 in a single day, working three events back-to-back. “We were exhausted,” Eric admits. “We slept the whole next day.”
A Family Affair
What makes Zydeco Meadery unique is its foundation as a family enterprise. Eric’s teenage children have been part of the journey from the beginning. “At first it was fun,” he says. “They didn’t realize they were secretly being trained as future employees.”
Weekends became bottling days, with payment in the form of lunches or homemade waffles. There were teenage sighs and TikTok distractions, but also pride. “Not many dads can say they built a business side by side with their kids,” Eric reflects.
His wife, too, has been central — completing her graduate studies at the University of Central Missouri while Eric established the Meadery in Massachusetts. The family lived apart for two years until the children moved north to join him. The sacrifices have been immense, driven by a shared belief in what Zydeco Meadery represents.
The Flavors of Memory
Each bottle carries a story:
- Carnival Rose (hibiscus mead) — Inspired by Eric’s Trinidadian grandmother, rooted in West Africa, who served at Caribbean festivals and is now embraced at U.S. Juneteenth celebrations. Puerto Rican and Mexican customers sip it and exclaim, “This tastes like my grandmother’s drink!” Even seasoned wine drinkers — the so-called “snobs” who typically demand dry French styles — are often surprised, asking for two bottles after just one sip.
- Yankee Heritage Cyser (apple-raisin mead) — This revived New England colonial recipe replaces molasses with knotweed honey, an invasive plant that produces dark, molasses-like nectar.
- Bayou Soleil (traminette grape mead) — A nod to Eric’s wife, echoing their early love for German Rieslings while they were undergraduate students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Traminette is a German-American hybrid grape with citrus aromas common in Rieslings and Gewürztraminer grapes.
Each flavor is a cultural bridge: from Boston to the Bayou, Kansas cattle country to Caribbean kitchens.
Struggles and Sacrifices
Despite creativity and hard work, Zydeco Meadery has yet to turn a profit. The barriers are steep: convincing restaurants to stock mead, securing distribution, surviving high costs in New England, and commuting long distances to the production site.
“Am I heavily invested? Yes,” Eric says. “Have I seen returns? Not yet. It’s a gamble. But this business is also a legacy. It could not exist without Louisiana, Kansas, and my family.”
Preserving the Past, Pouring the Future
Eric pauses before speaking carefully when asked about his hopes for the future. More than anything, he dreams of producing his mead in the same town where he lives, sparing his family the long drives home after long days at the winery. He wishes, too, that more restaurants and liquor stores would take a chance on his bottles, not with large orders, just a few at a time, enough to introduce new customers to the possibilities of mead. And above all, he hopes that Zydeco Meadery can one day be truly sustainable, a business strong enough to honor his wife and children’s sacrifices and provide a legacy they can be proud of.
For Eric, mead has never been just about business. It is a vessel for culture, a way to carry the traditions of Trinidad, Louisiana, and New England into the present. Each glass poured is a lesson, each bottle a story, of migration, resilience, and the Creole heritage that continues to bind communities across oceans and centuries.
Looking ahead, he hopes Zydeco Meadery will survive and thrive, a place where his children can one day choose to continue the work and where customers will keep discovering how history and heritage can be tasted and told. The meadery is still young, but like the best wines, Eric believes its story will only deepen with time.