What is Mead? Is it beer or wine?

Mead is neither a beer or wine, contrary to popular opinion, rather it is its own category of alcoholic drink made by fermenting honey and water. It is thought to possibly predate beer and wine, making it the oldest alcoholic drink!

The defining feature of Mead is of course honey, from which the fermentable sugars and a lot of the flavour comes from. It can be still or sparkling, dry or sweet, and sometimes have additional flavourings added.

Varieties of Mead

Besides classic honeyed mead, there are three main varieties of mead worth knowing about:

• Metheglin - Contains spices (cloves, nutmeg) or herbs (hops, lavendar etc).
• Melomel - Contains fruit such as strawberries. A grape mead is known as a Pyment.
• Mulled Mead - Popular at Christmas, it is flavoured with Xmas spices and warmed like mulled wine.

Many countries seem to have their own regional variant as well. For example, Finland has a sweet mead called sima, which often has brown sugar instead of honey used. Raisins are then added to raise the sugar level and flavour profile further. Ethiopia makes something called tej, which is flavoured with powdered leaves and bark of gesho, a type of buckthorn.