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Mead

Alcoholic beverage made from honey

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Mead that also contains spices is called metheglin (), and mead that contains fruit is called melomel. The term honey wine is sometimes used as a synonym for mead, although wine is typically defined to be the product of fermented grapes or certain other fruits, and some cultures have honey wines that are distinct from mead. The honey wine of Hungary, for example, is the fermentation of honey-sweetened pomace of grapes or other fruits.

Mead was produced in ancient times throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, and has played an important role in the mythology of some peoples, which sometimes ascribed magical or supernatural powers to it. In Norse mythology, for example, the Mead of Poetry, crafted from the blood of Kvasir, would turn anyone who drank it into a poet or scholar.

History

Mead was possibly discovered among the first humans 20,000–40,000 years ago prior to the advent of both agriculture and ceramic pottery in the Neolithic, due to the prevalence of naturally occurring fermentation and the distribution of eusocial honey-producing insects worldwide; as a result, it is hard to pinpoint the exact historical origin of mead given the possibility of multiple discovery or potential knowledge transfer between early humans prior to recorded history. With the eventual rise of ceramic pottery and increasing use of fermentation in food processing to preserve surplus agricultural crops, evidence of mead begins to show up in the archaeological record more clearly, with pottery vessels from northern China dating from at least 7000 BCE discovered containing chemical signatures consistent with the presence of honey, rice, and organic compounds associated with fermentation.

The earliest surviving written record of mead is possibly the soma mentioned in the hymns of the Rigveda, one of the sacred books of the historical Vedic religion and (later) Hinduism dated around 1700–1100 BCE. The Rigveda predates the Indo-Iranian separation, dated to roughly 2000 BCE, so this mention may originate from the Western Steppe or Eastern Europe. The Abri, a northern Illyrian subgroup of the Taulantii, were known to the ancient Greek writers for their technique of preparing mead from honey. During the Golden Age of ancient Greece, mead was said to be the preferred drink. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) discussed mead made in Illiria in his Meteorologica and elsewhere, while Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) used the name melitites in his Naturalis Historia for a grape and honey wine (Pliny, Bk 4, Ch. 9, Sec. 11). The Hispanic-Roman naturalist Lucius Columella gave a recipe for mead (mella or aqua mulsa, lit. 'honeyed water') in De re rustica, about 60 CE.

Take rainwater kept for several years, and mix a sextarius of this water with a [Roman] pound of honey. For a weaker mead, mix a sextarius of water with nine ounces of honey. The whole is exposed to the sun for 40 days and then left on a shelf near the fire. If you have no rain water, then boil spring water.

Ancient Greek writer Pytheas described a grain and honey drink similar to mead that he encountered while travelling in Thule. According to James Henry Ramsay this was an earlier version of Welsh metheglin. When 12-year-old Prince Charles II visited Wales in 1642 Welsh metheglin was served at the feast as a symbol of Welsh presence in the emerging British identity in the years between the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.

There is a poem attributed to the Welsh bard Taliesin, who lived around 550 CE, called the Kanu y med or "Song of Mead" (Cân y medd). The legendary drinking, feasting, and boasting of warriors in the mead hall is echoed in the mead hall Din Eidyn (modern-day Edinburgh) as depicted in the poem Y Gododdin, attributed to the poet Aneirin who would have been a contemporary of Taliesin. In the Old English epic poem Beowulf, the Danish warriors drank mead. In both Insular Celtic and Germanic poetry, mead was the primary drink associated with heroes and deities, see for example the Mead of poetry.

Mead (Old Irish mid) was a popular drink in medieval Ireland. Beekeeping was brought around the 5th century, traditionally attributed to Modomnoc, and mead came with it. A banquet hall on the Hill of Tara was known as Tech Mid Chuarda ("house of the circling of mead"). Mead was often infused with hazelnuts. Many other legends of saints mention mead, as does that of the Children of Lir.

Later, mead was increasingly displaced by other alcoholic beverages for which the fermentable sugars required were less expensive and more readily available, which combined with taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a relatively obscure beverage until recently. Some monasteries kept up the traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping, especially in areas where grapes could not be grown.

Since the turn of the 21st century, there has been a renaissance in mead production around the world. According to MeadWorld, there are at least 850 commercial mead producers in the world, as of 2025.

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Source and licence. Adapted from the Wikipedia article “Mead” (this version, 2026-09-12) by its contributors, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Lablypedia has left out its tables, references and most pictures, and linked it to other Lablypedia articles.