Traditional Mead — tasting notes & food pairings

Traditional Mead

Traditional mead — often simply called honey wine — is the ancestral fermented drink: honey dissolved in water and fermented by yeast into an alcoholic beverage, with nothing else required. A plain honey-and-water mead with no fruit, spice or added flavouring is known as a show mead, and it is the purest expression of the style. Ranging in colour from near-water-clear to deep amber depending on the honey, and in strength from a light table wine to a fortified-wine potency, mead can be bone dry, off-dry, or lusciously sweet. At roughly 8 to 18 percent alcohol it smells and tastes of honey above all — floral nectar, beeswax, orchard fruit and a warming glow — with the character of the flowers the bees visited written into every glass. Served chilled or at cellar temperature, still or lightly sparkling, mead is the drink of Norse sagas, medieval halls and Homeric feasts, and it is enjoying a vigorous modern craft revival.

Sweet11% ABV

Pale gold to warm amber and luminous in the glass, a good traditional mead leads with honey above all — floral nectar and beeswax over orchard fruit — the varietal character of the flowers the bees visited written into every sip. Depending on how far it fermented it can be crisp and bone dry, gently off-dry, or round and lusciously sweet, with a clean, warming, wine-like body at anywhere from about 8 to 18 percent alcohol. Still or lightly sparkling, it finishes long and honeyed; served chilled or at cellar temperature it is the ancestral honey wine of Norse halls and Homeric feasts, at home beside blue cheese, roast poultry, game and honey-glazed and fruit desserts.