The Hive Winery & Spirits is a food and drink brand founded in Layton, Utah, in 2010.
The Hive Winery started with Lori Yahne's pitch to her husband: "Hey, if we start a winery, maybe we can take a vacation." Jay told SLUG Magazine he came back two weeks later with a business plan. The Layton couple were geotechnical engineers whose firm had shrunk in the 2008 recession, and they founded The Hive in 2010.
They had been home brewing for about 15 years. The Hive opened its doors in June 2011, and the engineering firm closed in 2016, when wine became the full-time job. The list leans on honey wines and fruit wines that skip grapes entirely. Utah State calls it Utah's first brandy distillery and the smallest commercial still in the state. The still started at 25 gallons and is now 100, which the company describes as "whopping."
SLUG called the black currant honey wine a fan favorite back in 2012. State liquor stores carry the larger batches of the core wines, while most seasonal batches run 30 to 150 gallons and sell only for a while. The company lists more than 140 products and a staff of three, which is a lot of bottles for a plan that started with a vacation.
Before The Hive, Jay Yahne ran the drilling rig and Lori Yahne ran the soils laboratory at their geotechnical engineering firm.
