Sweet as Mead

This past weekend, my partner and I were up in Door County - the “Cape Cod of the Midwest” as it’s apparently known to like two people, one of which was a server of ours this weekend -  and, like we always do on vacation, we made it our business to try the local breweries, wineries, and distilleries. 

Well, we were sitting in a distillery, unfortunately being pretty disappointed as the brown liquid was just… well, not good. I was pretty glum, when I flipped over the menu and realized we had missed an entire backside full to the brim of other things to try. Turns out this distillery also had a sister-company that made wine, cider, and mead. 

Honestly, this really didn’t endear me to it any more. In my mind that’s too many things to do well, so I thought they’d all follow in the vein of the spirits. 

But Matt was the optimist (for once) and insisted we try some of the mead. It was the most “out there” thing on the menu, and we had recently tried some mead in Arizona that we were surprisingly not mad at, so this had potential to be good too, right?

What the hell. Let’s give it a shot. 

And hot damn it that wasn’t some good drinking! 

So immediately this sparked an idea in my mind to share with all of you what mead is, the different types that exist, and whether or not this is an up-and-coming or on-its-way-out trend. 

What is it?

For once, let’s not start with a history lesson, but instead focus on a simple definition. Mead is perhaps more of a “fringe” beverage, so I want to make sure everyone knows what it actually is. 

The most simple definition available dictates mead is, “a fermented beverage made of water and honey, and yeast.”

Who can name a very noticeable, very common ingredient missing from that list? That’s right, there are absolutely no grains used in basic mead! 

First of all, that’s cool because it means it’s a naturally gluten-free drink, for my celiacs and gluent-intolerants out there. Second of all, it marks it as a pointedly different drink than beer. 

So then, the next thing that comes to your mind might be, “oh, okay, so it’s like wine then.” But, sadly no, that is also not the case. 

While it follows more of the processes of wine (i.e. it’s fermented, not brewed) the definition of wine calls out that it is, “the alcoholic, usually fermented, juice of a plant product (such as a fruit) used as a beverage.”

Honey, the primary ingredient in mead, is an animal-derived food. So although the production methods may be similar, this makes mead markedly distinct from wine. 

While this may seem like semantics, it’s an important definition. Mead is not beer, and it is not wine, it is just mead. 

How does it drink?

The next best thing to tackle here is the common misconception of “it’s too sweet” and/or “it just tastes like honey”. I really want to dispel these myths because I was one of those voices! And recently! 

So, what does mead taste like? What are its characteristics? 

Cop-out answer: it’s hard to pin down. And that’s because similar to both wine and beer there are different styles of mead. The best written description I could find was this, from Delish:

“Mead has its own unique taste due to the honey that’s fermented, but depending on the ingredients added, it can come across like a fruit wine, white wine, even similar to a hard cider,” DeRise explains. Reis’s guide says that the best examples of mead “preserve or amplify the complexities of a high-quality honey and add floral, earthy, or white wine-like fermentation-born aromatics to complement the honey’s flavor.”

Personally, from the very few examples I had from years ago, I would have only been able to describe mead as sweet, syrupy, and maybe slightly funky. But last year, we visited Superstition Meadery in Arizona and got started on this “ohmygoodness is mead actually good?!” quest of ours. 

I think the two biggest mind-changers were the funky-non-sweet version of mead - most comparable to the hyper-dry funky ciders from Sommerset, England - and the sparkling meads, which threw it into cider territory again or perhaps like rich, bubbly white wine. 

There are many, many different styles of mead out there. Liquor.com simply and aptly laid out just a few of the more common ones here: 

You already know metheglin, but don’t forget melomel, a mead that contains juice or fruit like blackberries and raspberries. Then there’s cyser, an apple-based mead; acerglyn, made with maple syrup; braggot, a mead/beer blend brewed with hops or barley; rhodomel, a very old style laced with roses—and legions more.

(If you didn’t already know metheglin, it’s what we’d think of as the “old-school” mead; sweeter, focusing on mild honey flavors, with warming herbs and spices added like cloves, ginger, rosemary, and thyme.)

From just the very few meaderies we have visited in the past year, it is truly amazing to me how vast the flavor profiles of mead can be. Do you like super-dry farm-y flavors? Mead’s got it. Light bubbly zest? Yep, mead’s got it. Dark bramble berries? Check. Sweet Christmas-y flavors? Yep yep yep!

Why do we care?

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “mead” I immediately think of a Renaissance Faire. Which, like it or not, kept mead stored away in a little box in my brain labeled “niche market” or maybe even “not relevant anymore”. (Sorry Ren Faire-ers, you are niche though.) 

But this is really not the case. Yes, I am saying I was wrong. I take my hat off to you, mead. 

That’s right, craft mead is on the rise, folks. There are now over 250 meaderies in America; that is a 650% increase from 20 years ago. 

I’d project we’re still right at the start of it though, whatever “it” might turn out to be. While that uptick over recent years is impressive, if you look at it in contrast with craft wineries, it’s still small potatoes. (Shameless plug: I recently wrote an article on the rise of craft wineries ) For example, we have >110 craft wineries in Wisconsin alone. And that’s in Wisconsin of all places. 

But it is a start. 

If more producers start making more and different styles of mead, the more they’ll find a following. People will try it and realize it can be more than just sweet honey flavor. 

I tried it on a whim, and I was highly impressed. 

Weekly Adventure

I want to send you on a hunt to find mead, but honestly I’m not sure if you’ll be able to! After coming home from our adventure up north, I was able to find 3 bottles in my local grocery store and 6 different types at my local liquor store. So there was some, but not a lot. 

But please, go try to find and try some. Why not? 

And leave me a comment down below if you were able to do so, I’d love to hear about your experiences! 

(FYI - to comment you need to be a member. It costs nothing and I don’t spam you - I promise! So subscribe today so you can tell me all about it.)

Cheers,

Molly

References 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mead

https://www.wineenthusiast.com/culture/spirits/what-is-mead/

https://www.liquor.com/articles/10-facts-about-mead/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/mead

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wine

https://www.wineenthusiast.com/culture/spirits/american-mead-guide/