Mead is an
alcoholic beverageAn alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits....
, made from
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
and
waterWater is an ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life.In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71%...
via
fermentationThe process of fermentation in wine is the catalyst function that turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
with
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild
aleAle is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers' yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the...
to that of a strong
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Mead is often referred to as "honey wine."
Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
to produce a bitter,
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
-like flavor.
Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."
History
The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China. In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the
Bell Beaker CultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
.
The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
, one of the sacred books of the
historical Vedic religionThe religion of the Vedic period is the historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices...
and (later)
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the
Golden AgeThe term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend, but can also be found in other ancient cultures . It refers either to the earliest and best age in a sequence of ages, such as the Greek range of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, or to a time in the beginnings of humanity that was...
of
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, mead was said to be the preferred drink.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384–322 BC) discussed mead in his
MeteorologicaMeteorology is a text by Aristotle which contains his theories about the earth sciences. These include early accounts of water evaporation, weather phenomena, and earthquakes....
and elsewhere, while
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(AD 23–79) called mead
militites in his
Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Spanish-Roman naturalist
ColumellaLucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming...
gave a recipe for mead in
De re rustica, about AD 60.
Around AD 550, the
Brythonic speakingThe Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
bardIn medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities....
TaliesinTaliesin was a British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
wrote the
or "Song of Mead." The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the
mead hallIn ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
is echoed in the mead hall
Dyn Eidyn (modern day
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
), and in the epic poem
Y GododdinY Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
, both dated around AD 700. In the Nordic Story
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
The Northmen drank Honey mead.
Mead was the historical beverage
par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in
Northern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. The United Nations defines Northern Europe as including the following countries and dependent regions:** ** ** Ireland** Svalbard and Jan Mayen** ** Channel Islands: and...
. Later, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some
monasteriesMonastery , a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer Monastery (plural: monasteries), a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios...
kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of
beekeepingBeekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.-Origins:There are more than...
, especially in areas where
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
s could not be grown.
Etymology
The English word mead derives from the Old English
medu, from Proto-Germanic
meduz.
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead," (Slovak, Serbian, Macedonian, Chroatian:
med vs.
medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and
BalticThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
midus, which means "mead," also derive from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
root (cf.
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
medd, Old Irish mid, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
madhu).
Distribution
Mead was also popular in
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and in the Baltic states. In
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
mead is called
, meaning "drinkable honey." In
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
mead remained popular as
medovukhaMedovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
and
sbitenSbiten, also sbiten' is a hot winter Russian traditional drink. First mentioned in Slavonic chronicles in 1128, it remained popular with all stratas of Russian society until the 19th century when it was replaced by tea...
long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including
GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
,
DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
and
TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
.
In
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
a sweet mead called
(
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
with
zymurgyZymurgy or zymology is the scientific study of fermentation. The word was originally used to describe the science involved in these processes, but has since become more broadly used to describe the brewing of alcoholic beverages...
) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish
VappuWalpurgis Night is a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated today by Christian and non-Christian communities as well, on April 30 or May 1 in large parts of Central and Northern Europe....
(
May DayMay Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by the unions and socialist groups....
) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a
lemonThe lemon is a small evergreen tree originally native to Asia, and is also the name of the tree's oval yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
. During
secondary fermentationSecondary fermentation is a process commonly associated with winemaking, which entails a second period of fermentation in a different vessel than what was used when the fermentation process first started. An examples of this would be starting fermentation in a carboy or stainless steel tank and...
,
raisinRaisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world, such as Armenia, the United States, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Macedonia, Mexico, Greece, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Afghanistan, Togo, and Jamaica, as well as South Africa and Southern and...
s are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n mead is called
tejTej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
Mead is an
alcoholic beverageAn alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits....
, made from
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
and
waterWater is an ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life.In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71%...
via
fermentationThe process of fermentation in wine is the catalyst function that turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
with
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild
aleAle is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers' yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the...
to that of a strong
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Mead is often referred to as "honey wine."
Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
to produce a bitter,
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
-like flavor.
Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."
History
The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China. In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the
Bell Beaker CultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
.
The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
, one of the sacred books of the
historical Vedic religionThe religion of the Vedic period is the historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices...
and (later)
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the
Golden AgeThe term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend, but can also be found in other ancient cultures . It refers either to the earliest and best age in a sequence of ages, such as the Greek range of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, or to a time in the beginnings of humanity that was...
of
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, mead was said to be the preferred drink.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384–322 BC) discussed mead in his
MeteorologicaMeteorology is a text by Aristotle which contains his theories about the earth sciences. These include early accounts of water evaporation, weather phenomena, and earthquakes....
and elsewhere, while
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(AD 23–79) called mead
militites in his
Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Spanish-Roman naturalist
ColumellaLucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming...
gave a recipe for mead in
De re rustica, about AD 60.
Around AD 550, the
Brythonic speakingThe Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
bardIn medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities....
TaliesinTaliesin was a British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
wrote the
or "Song of Mead." The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the
mead hallIn ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
is echoed in the mead hall
Dyn Eidyn (modern day
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
), and in the epic poem
Y GododdinY Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
, both dated around AD 700. In the Nordic Story
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
The Northmen drank Honey mead.
Mead was the historical beverage
par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in
Northern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. The United Nations defines Northern Europe as including the following countries and dependent regions:** ** ** Ireland** Svalbard and Jan Mayen** ** Channel Islands: and...
. Later, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some
monasteriesMonastery , a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer Monastery (plural: monasteries), a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios...
kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of
beekeepingBeekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.-Origins:There are more than...
, especially in areas where
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
s could not be grown.
Etymology
The English word mead derives from the Old English
medu, from Proto-Germanic
meduz.
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead," (Slovak, Serbian, Macedonian, Chroatian:
med vs.
medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and
BalticThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
midus, which means "mead," also derive from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
root (cf.
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
medd, Old Irish mid, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
madhu).
Distribution
Mead was also popular in
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and in the Baltic states. In
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
mead is called
, meaning "drinkable honey." In
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
mead remained popular as
medovukhaMedovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
and
sbitenSbiten, also sbiten' is a hot winter Russian traditional drink. First mentioned in Slavonic chronicles in 1128, it remained popular with all stratas of Russian society until the 19th century when it was replaced by tea...
long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including
GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
,
DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
and
TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
.
In
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
a sweet mead called
(
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
with
zymurgyZymurgy or zymology is the scientific study of fermentation. The word was originally used to describe the science involved in these processes, but has since become more broadly used to describe the brewing of alcoholic beverages...
) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish
VappuWalpurgis Night is a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated today by Christian and non-Christian communities as well, on April 30 or May 1 in large parts of Central and Northern Europe....
(
May DayMay Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by the unions and socialist groups....
) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a
lemonThe lemon is a small evergreen tree originally native to Asia, and is also the name of the tree's oval yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
. During
secondary fermentationSecondary fermentation is a process commonly associated with winemaking, which entails a second period of fermentation in a different vessel than what was used when the fermentation process first started. An examples of this would be starting fermentation in a carboy or stainless steel tank and...
,
raisinRaisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world, such as Armenia, the United States, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Macedonia, Mexico, Greece, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Afghanistan, Togo, and Jamaica, as well as South Africa and Southern and...
s are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n mead is called
tejTej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
Mead is an
alcoholic beverageAn alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits....
, made from
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
and
waterWater is an ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life.In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71%...
via
fermentationThe process of fermentation in wine is the catalyst function that turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
with
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild
aleAle is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers' yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the...
to that of a strong
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Mead is often referred to as "honey wine."
Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
to produce a bitter,
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
-like flavor.
Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."
History
The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China. In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the
Bell Beaker CultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
.
The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
, one of the sacred books of the
historical Vedic religionThe religion of the Vedic period is the historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices...
and (later)
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the
Golden AgeThe term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend, but can also be found in other ancient cultures . It refers either to the earliest and best age in a sequence of ages, such as the Greek range of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, or to a time in the beginnings of humanity that was...
of
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, mead was said to be the preferred drink.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384–322 BC) discussed mead in his
MeteorologicaMeteorology is a text by Aristotle which contains his theories about the earth sciences. These include early accounts of water evaporation, weather phenomena, and earthquakes....
and elsewhere, while
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(AD 23–79) called mead
militites in his
Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Spanish-Roman naturalist
ColumellaLucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming...
gave a recipe for mead in
De re rustica, about AD 60.
Around AD 550, the
Brythonic speakingThe Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
bardIn medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities....
TaliesinTaliesin was a British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
wrote the
or "Song of Mead." The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the
mead hallIn ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
is echoed in the mead hall
Dyn Eidyn (modern day
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
), and in the epic poem
Y GododdinY Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
, both dated around AD 700. In the Nordic Story
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
The Northmen drank Honey mead.
Mead was the historical beverage
par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in
Northern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. The United Nations defines Northern Europe as including the following countries and dependent regions:** ** ** Ireland** Svalbard and Jan Mayen** ** Channel Islands: and...
. Later, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some
monasteriesMonastery , a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer Monastery (plural: monasteries), a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios...
kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of
beekeepingBeekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.-Origins:There are more than...
, especially in areas where
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
s could not be grown.
Etymology
The English word mead derives from the Old English
medu, from Proto-Germanic
meduz.
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead," (Slovak, Serbian, Macedonian, Chroatian:
med vs.
medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and
BalticThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
midus, which means "mead," also derive from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
root (cf.
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
medd, Old Irish mid, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
madhu).
Distribution
Mead was also popular in
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and in the Baltic states. In
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
mead is called
, meaning "drinkable honey." In
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
mead remained popular as
medovukhaMedovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
and
sbitenSbiten, also sbiten' is a hot winter Russian traditional drink. First mentioned in Slavonic chronicles in 1128, it remained popular with all stratas of Russian society until the 19th century when it was replaced by tea...
long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including
GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
,
DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
and
TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
.
In
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
a sweet mead called
(
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
with
zymurgyZymurgy or zymology is the scientific study of fermentation. The word was originally used to describe the science involved in these processes, but has since become more broadly used to describe the brewing of alcoholic beverages...
) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish
VappuWalpurgis Night is a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated today by Christian and non-Christian communities as well, on April 30 or May 1 in large parts of Central and Northern Europe....
(
May DayMay Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by the unions and socialist groups....
) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a
lemonThe lemon is a small evergreen tree originally native to Asia, and is also the name of the tree's oval yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
. During
secondary fermentationSecondary fermentation is a process commonly associated with winemaking, which entails a second period of fermentation in a different vessel than what was used when the fermentation process first started. An examples of this would be starting fermentation in a carboy or stainless steel tank and...
,
raisinRaisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world, such as Armenia, the United States, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Macedonia, Mexico, Greece, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Afghanistan, Togo, and Jamaica, as well as South Africa and Southern and...
s are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n mead is called
tejTej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
Mead is an
alcoholic beverageAn alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits....
, made from
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
and
waterWater is an ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life.In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71%...
via
fermentationThe process of fermentation in wine is the catalyst function that turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
with
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild
aleAle is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers' yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the...
to that of a strong
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Mead is often referred to as "honey wine."
Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
to produce a bitter,
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
-like flavor.
Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."
History
The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China. In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the
Bell Beaker CultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
.
The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
, one of the sacred books of the
historical Vedic religionThe religion of the Vedic period is the historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices...
and (later)
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the
Golden AgeThe term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend, but can also be found in other ancient cultures . It refers either to the earliest and best age in a sequence of ages, such as the Greek range of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, or to a time in the beginnings of humanity that was...
of
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, mead was said to be the preferred drink.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384–322 BC) discussed mead in his
MeteorologicaMeteorology is a text by Aristotle which contains his theories about the earth sciences. These include early accounts of water evaporation, weather phenomena, and earthquakes....
and elsewhere, while
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(AD 23–79) called mead
militites in his
Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Spanish-Roman naturalist
ColumellaLucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming...
gave a recipe for mead in
De re rustica, about AD 60.
Around AD 550, the
Brythonic speakingThe Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
bardIn medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities....
TaliesinTaliesin was a British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
wrote the
or "Song of Mead." The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the
mead hallIn ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
is echoed in the mead hall
Dyn Eidyn (modern day
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
), and in the epic poem
Y GododdinY Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
, both dated around AD 700. In the Nordic Story
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
The Northmen drank Honey mead.
Mead was the historical beverage
par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in
Northern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. The United Nations defines Northern Europe as including the following countries and dependent regions:** ** ** Ireland** Svalbard and Jan Mayen** ** Channel Islands: and...
. Later, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some
monasteriesMonastery , a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer Monastery (plural: monasteries), a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios...
kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of
beekeepingBeekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.-Origins:There are more than...
, especially in areas where
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
s could not be grown.
Etymology
The English word mead derives from the Old English
medu, from Proto-Germanic
meduz.
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead," (Slovak, Serbian, Macedonian, Chroatian:
med vs.
medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and
BalticThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
midus, which means "mead," also derive from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
root (cf.
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
medd, Old Irish mid, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
madhu).
Distribution
Mead was also popular in
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and in the Baltic states. In
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
mead is called
, meaning "drinkable honey." In
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
mead remained popular as
medovukhaMedovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
and
sbitenSbiten, also sbiten' is a hot winter Russian traditional drink. First mentioned in Slavonic chronicles in 1128, it remained popular with all stratas of Russian society until the 19th century when it was replaced by tea...
long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including
GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
,
DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
and
TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
.
In
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
a sweet mead called
(
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
with
zymurgyZymurgy or zymology is the scientific study of fermentation. The word was originally used to describe the science involved in these processes, but has since become more broadly used to describe the brewing of alcoholic beverages...
) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish
VappuWalpurgis Night is a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated today by Christian and non-Christian communities as well, on April 30 or May 1 in large parts of Central and Northern Europe....
(
May DayMay Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by the unions and socialist groups....
) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a
lemonThe lemon is a small evergreen tree originally native to Asia, and is also the name of the tree's oval yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
. During
secondary fermentationSecondary fermentation is a process commonly associated with winemaking, which entails a second period of fermentation in a different vessel than what was used when the fermentation process first started. An examples of this would be starting fermentation in a carboy or stainless steel tank and...
,
raisinRaisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world, such as Armenia, the United States, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Macedonia, Mexico, Greece, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Afghanistan, Togo, and Jamaica, as well as South Africa and Southern and...
s are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n mead is called
tejTej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
Mead is an
alcoholic beverageAn alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits....
, made from
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
and
waterWater is an ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life.In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71%...
via
fermentationThe process of fermentation in wine is the catalyst function that turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
with
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild
aleAle is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers' yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the...
to that of a strong
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Mead is often referred to as "honey wine."
Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
to produce a bitter,
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
-like flavor.
Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."
History
The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China. In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the
Bell Beaker CultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
.
The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
, one of the sacred books of the
historical Vedic religionThe religion of the Vedic period is the historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices...
and (later)
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the
Golden AgeThe term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend, but can also be found in other ancient cultures . It refers either to the earliest and best age in a sequence of ages, such as the Greek range of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, or to a time in the beginnings of humanity that was...
of
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, mead was said to be the preferred drink.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384–322 BC) discussed mead in his
MeteorologicaMeteorology is a text by Aristotle which contains his theories about the earth sciences. These include early accounts of water evaporation, weather phenomena, and earthquakes....
and elsewhere, while
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(AD 23–79) called mead
militites in his
Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Spanish-Roman naturalist
ColumellaLucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming...
gave a recipe for mead in
De re rustica, about AD 60.
Around AD 550, the
Brythonic speakingThe Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
bardIn medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities....
TaliesinTaliesin was a British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
wrote the
or "Song of Mead." The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the
mead hallIn ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
is echoed in the mead hall
Dyn Eidyn (modern day
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
), and in the epic poem
Y GododdinY Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
, both dated around AD 700. In the Nordic Story
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
The Northmen drank Honey mead.
Mead was the historical beverage
par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in
Northern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. The United Nations defines Northern Europe as including the following countries and dependent regions:** ** ** Ireland** Svalbard and Jan Mayen** ** Channel Islands: and...
. Later, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some
monasteriesMonastery , a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer Monastery (plural: monasteries), a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios...
kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of
beekeepingBeekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.-Origins:There are more than...
, especially in areas where
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
s could not be grown.
Etymology
The English word mead derives from the Old English
medu, from Proto-Germanic
meduz.
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead," (Slovak, Serbian, Macedonian, Chroatian:
med vs.
medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and
BalticThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
midus, which means "mead," also derive from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
root (cf.
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
medd, Old Irish mid, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
madhu).
Distribution
Mead was also popular in
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and in the Baltic states. In
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
mead is called
, meaning "drinkable honey." In
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
mead remained popular as
medovukhaMedovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
and
sbitenSbiten, also sbiten' is a hot winter Russian traditional drink. First mentioned in Slavonic chronicles in 1128, it remained popular with all stratas of Russian society until the 19th century when it was replaced by tea...
long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including
GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
,
DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (, Fёdor Mihajlovič Dosto'evskij, , sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, Dostoievsky, Dostojevskij, Dostoevski, Dostojevski or Dostoevskii ( – ) was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
and
TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
.
In
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
a sweet mead called
(
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
with
zymurgyZymurgy or zymology is the scientific study of fermentation. The word was originally used to describe the science involved in these processes, but has since become more broadly used to describe the brewing of alcoholic beverages...
) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish
VappuWalpurgis Night is a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated today by Christian and non-Christian communities as well, on April 30 or May 1 in large parts of Central and Northern Europe....
(
May DayMay Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by the unions and socialist groups....
) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a
lemonThe lemon is a small evergreen tree originally native to Asia, and is also the name of the tree's oval yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
. During
secondary fermentationSecondary fermentation is a process commonly associated with winemaking, which entails a second period of fermentation in a different vessel than what was used when the fermentation process first started. An examples of this would be starting fermentation in a carboy or stainless steel tank and...
,
raisinRaisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world, such as Armenia, the United States, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Macedonia, Mexico, Greece, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Afghanistan, Togo, and Jamaica, as well as South Africa and Southern and...
s are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n mead is called
tejTej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
Mead is an
alcoholic beverageAn alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits....
, made from
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
and
waterWater is an ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life.In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71%...
via
fermentationThe process of fermentation in wine is the catalyst function that turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
with
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild
aleAle is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers' yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the...
to that of a strong
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Mead is often referred to as "honey wine."
Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
to produce a bitter,
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
-like flavor.
Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."
History
The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China. In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the
Bell Beaker CultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
.
The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
, one of the sacred books of the
historical Vedic religionThe religion of the Vedic period is the historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices...
and (later)
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the
Golden AgeThe term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend, but can also be found in other ancient cultures . It refers either to the earliest and best age in a sequence of ages, such as the Greek range of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, or to a time in the beginnings of humanity that was...
of
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, mead was said to be the preferred drink.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384–322 BC) discussed mead in his
MeteorologicaMeteorology is a text by Aristotle which contains his theories about the earth sciences. These include early accounts of water evaporation, weather phenomena, and earthquakes....
and elsewhere, while
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(AD 23–79) called mead
militites in his
Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Spanish-Roman naturalist
ColumellaLucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming...
gave a recipe for mead in
De re rustica, about AD 60.
Around AD 550, the
Brythonic speakingThe Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
bardIn medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities....
TaliesinTaliesin was a British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
wrote the
or "Song of Mead." The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the
mead hallIn ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
is echoed in the mead hall
Dyn Eidyn (modern day
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
), and in the epic poem
Y GododdinY Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
, both dated around AD 700. In the Nordic Story
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
The Northmen drank Honey mead.
Mead was the historical beverage
par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in
Northern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. The United Nations defines Northern Europe as including the following countries and dependent regions:** ** ** Ireland** Svalbard and Jan Mayen** ** Channel Islands: and...
. Later, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some
monasteriesMonastery , a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer Monastery (plural: monasteries), a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios...
kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of
beekeepingBeekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.-Origins:There are more than...
, especially in areas where
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
s could not be grown.
Etymology
The English word mead derives from the Old English
medu, from Proto-Germanic
meduz.
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead," (Slovak, Serbian, Macedonian, Chroatian:
med vs.
medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and
BalticThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
midus, which means "mead," also derive from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
root (cf.
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
medd, Old Irish mid, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
madhu).
Distribution
Mead was also popular in
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and in the Baltic states. In
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
mead is called
, meaning "drinkable honey." In
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
mead remained popular as
medovukhaMedovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
and
sbitenSbiten, also sbiten' is a hot winter Russian traditional drink. First mentioned in Slavonic chronicles in 1128, it remained popular with all stratas of Russian society until the 19th century when it was replaced by tea...
long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including
GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
,
DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (, Fёdor Mihajlovič Dosto'evskij, , sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, Dostoievsky, Dostojevskij, Dostoevski, Dostojevski or Dostoevskii ( – ) was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
and
TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
.
In
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
a sweet mead called
(
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
with
zymurgyZymurgy or zymology is the scientific study of fermentation. The word was originally used to describe the science involved in these processes, but has since become more broadly used to describe the brewing of alcoholic beverages...
) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish
VappuWalpurgis Night is a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated today by Christian and non-Christian communities as well, on April 30 or May 1 in large parts of Central and Northern Europe....
(
May DayMay Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by the unions and socialist groups....
) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a
lemonThe lemon is a small evergreen tree originally native to Asia, and is also the name of the tree's oval yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
. During
secondary fermentationSecondary fermentation is a process commonly associated with winemaking, which entails a second period of fermentation in a different vessel than what was used when the fermentation process first started. An examples of this would be starting fermentation in a carboy or stainless steel tank and...
,
raisinRaisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world, such as Armenia, the United States, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Macedonia, Mexico, Greece, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Afghanistan, Togo, and Jamaica, as well as South Africa and Southern and...
s are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n mead is called
tejTej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
Mead is an
alcoholic beverageAn alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits....
, made from
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
and
waterWater is an ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life.In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71%...
via
fermentationThe process of fermentation in wine is the catalyst function that turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
with
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild
aleAle is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers' yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the...
to that of a strong
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Mead is often referred to as "honey wine."
Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
to produce a bitter,
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
-like flavor.
Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."
History
The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China. In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the
Bell Beaker CultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
.
The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
, one of the sacred books of the
historical Vedic religionThe religion of the Vedic period is the historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices...
and (later)
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the
Golden AgeThe term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend, but can also be found in other ancient cultures . It refers either to the earliest and best age in a sequence of ages, such as the Greek range of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, or to a time in the beginnings of humanity that was...
of
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, mead was said to be the preferred drink.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384–322 BC) discussed mead in his
MeteorologicaMeteorology is a text by Aristotle which contains his theories about the earth sciences. These include early accounts of water evaporation, weather phenomena, and earthquakes....
and elsewhere, while
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(AD 23–79) called mead
militites in his
Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Spanish-Roman naturalist
ColumellaLucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming...
gave a recipe for mead in
De re rustica, about AD 60.
Around AD 550, the
Brythonic speakingThe Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
bardIn medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities....
TaliesinTaliesin was a British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
wrote the
or "Song of Mead." The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the
mead hallIn ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
is echoed in the mead hall
Dyn Eidyn (modern day
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
), and in the epic poem
Y GododdinY Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
, both dated around AD 700. In the Nordic Story
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
The Northmen drank Honey mead.
Mead was the historical beverage
par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in
Northern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. The United Nations defines Northern Europe as including the following countries and dependent regions:** ** ** Ireland** Svalbard and Jan Mayen** ** Channel Islands: and...
. Later, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some
monasteriesMonastery , a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer Monastery (plural: monasteries), a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios...
kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of
beekeepingBeekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.-Origins:There are more than...
, especially in areas where
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
s could not be grown.
Etymology
The English word mead derives from the Old English
medu, from Proto-Germanic
meduz.
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead," (Slovak, Serbian, Macedonian, Chroatian:
med vs.
medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and
BalticThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
midus, which means "mead," also derive from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
root (cf.
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
medd, Old Irish mid, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
madhu).
Distribution
Mead was also popular in
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and in the Baltic states. In
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
mead is called
, meaning "drinkable honey." In
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
mead remained popular as
medovukhaMedovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
and
sbitenSbiten, also sbiten' is a hot winter Russian traditional drink. First mentioned in Slavonic chronicles in 1128, it remained popular with all stratas of Russian society until the 19th century when it was replaced by tea...
long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including
GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
,
DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
and
TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
.
In
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
a sweet mead called
(
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
with
zymurgyZymurgy or zymology is the scientific study of fermentation. The word was originally used to describe the science involved in these processes, but has since become more broadly used to describe the brewing of alcoholic beverages...
) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish
VappuWalpurgis Night is a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated today by Christian and non-Christian communities as well, on April 30 or May 1 in large parts of Central and Northern Europe....
(
May DayMay Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by the unions and socialist groups....
) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a
lemonThe lemon is a small evergreen tree originally native to Asia, and is also the name of the tree's oval yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
. During
secondary fermentationSecondary fermentation is a process commonly associated with winemaking, which entails a second period of fermentation in a different vessel than what was used when the fermentation process first started. An examples of this would be starting fermentation in a carboy or stainless steel tank and...
,
raisinRaisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world, such as Armenia, the United States, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Macedonia, Mexico, Greece, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Afghanistan, Togo, and Jamaica, as well as South Africa and Southern and...
s are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n mead is called
tejTej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
Mead is an
alcoholic beverageAn alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits....
, made from
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
and
waterWater is an ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life.In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71%...
via
fermentationThe process of fermentation in wine is the catalyst function that turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
with
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild
aleAle is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers' yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the...
to that of a strong
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Mead is often referred to as "honey wine."
Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
to produce a bitter,
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
-like flavor.
Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."
History
The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China. In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the
Bell Beaker CultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
.
The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
, one of the sacred books of the
historical Vedic religionThe religion of the Vedic period is the historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices...
and (later)
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the
Golden AgeThe term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend, but can also be found in other ancient cultures . It refers either to the earliest and best age in a sequence of ages, such as the Greek range of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, or to a time in the beginnings of humanity that was...
of
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, mead was said to be the preferred drink.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384–322 BC) discussed mead in his
MeteorologicaMeteorology is a text by Aristotle which contains his theories about the earth sciences. These include early accounts of water evaporation, weather phenomena, and earthquakes....
and elsewhere, while
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(AD 23–79) called mead
militites in his
Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Spanish-Roman naturalist
ColumellaLucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming...
gave a recipe for mead in
De re rustica, about AD 60.
Around AD 550, the
Brythonic speakingThe Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
bardIn medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities....
TaliesinTaliesin was a British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
wrote the
or "Song of Mead." The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the
mead hallIn ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
is echoed in the mead hall
Dyn Eidyn (modern day
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
), and in the epic poem
Y GododdinY Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
, both dated around AD 700. In the Nordic Story
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
The Northmen drank Honey mead.
Mead was the historical beverage
par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in
Northern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. The United Nations defines Northern Europe as including the following countries and dependent regions:** ** ** Ireland** Svalbard and Jan Mayen** ** Channel Islands: and...
. Later, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some
monasteriesMonastery , a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer Monastery (plural: monasteries), a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios...
kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of
beekeepingBeekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.-Origins:There are more than...
, especially in areas where
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
s could not be grown.
Etymology
The English word mead derives from the Old English
medu, from Proto-Germanic
meduz.
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead," (Slovak, Serbian, Macedonian, Chroatian:
med vs.
medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and
BalticThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
midus, which means "mead," also derive from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
root (cf.
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
medd, Old Irish mid, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
madhu).
Distribution
Mead was also popular in
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and in the Baltic states. In
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
mead is called
, meaning "drinkable honey." In
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
mead remained popular as
medovukhaMedovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
and
sbitenSbiten, also sbiten' is a hot winter Russian traditional drink. First mentioned in Slavonic chronicles in 1128, it remained popular with all stratas of Russian society until the 19th century when it was replaced by tea...
long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including
GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
,
DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (, Fёdor Mihajlovič Dosto'evskij, , sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, Dostoievsky, Dostojevskij, Dostoevski, Dostojevski or Dostoevskii ( – ) was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
and
TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
.
In
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
a sweet mead called
(
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
with
zymurgyZymurgy or zymology is the scientific study of fermentation. The word was originally used to describe the science involved in these processes, but has since become more broadly used to describe the brewing of alcoholic beverages...
) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish
VappuWalpurgis Night is a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated today by Christian and non-Christian communities as well, on April 30 or May 1 in large parts of Central and Northern Europe....
(
May DayMay Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by the unions and socialist groups....
) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a
lemonThe lemon is a small evergreen tree originally native to Asia, and is also the name of the tree's oval yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
. During
secondary fermentationSecondary fermentation is a process commonly associated with winemaking, which entails a second period of fermentation in a different vessel than what was used when the fermentation process first started. An examples of this would be starting fermentation in a carboy or stainless steel tank and...
,
raisinRaisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world, such as Armenia, the United States, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Macedonia, Mexico, Greece, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Afghanistan, Togo, and Jamaica, as well as South Africa and Southern and...
s are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n mead is called
tejTej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
Mead is an
alcoholic beverageAn alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits....
, made from
honeyHoney is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
and
waterWater is an ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life.In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71%...
via
fermentationThe process of fermentation in wine is the catalyst function that turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
with
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild
aleAle is a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers' yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the...
to that of a strong
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Mead is often referred to as "honey wine."
Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
to produce a bitter,
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
-like flavor.
Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."
Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...
makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."
History
The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China. In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the
Bell Beaker CultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
.
The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
, one of the sacred books of the
historical Vedic religionThe religion of the Vedic period is the historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices...
and (later)
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the
Golden AgeThe term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend, but can also be found in other ancient cultures . It refers either to the earliest and best age in a sequence of ages, such as the Greek range of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, or to a time in the beginnings of humanity that was...
of
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, mead was said to be the preferred drink.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384–322 BC) discussed mead in his
MeteorologicaMeteorology is a text by Aristotle which contains his theories about the earth sciences. These include early accounts of water evaporation, weather phenomena, and earthquakes....
and elsewhere, while
Pliny the ElderGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(AD 23–79) called mead
militites in his
Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. The Spanish-Roman naturalist
ColumellaLucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming...
gave a recipe for mead in
De re rustica, about AD 60.
Around AD 550, the
Brythonic speakingThe Brythonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
bardIn medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities....
TaliesinTaliesin was a British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
wrote the
or "Song of Mead." The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the
mead hallIn ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
is echoed in the mead hall
Dyn Eidyn (modern day
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
), and in the epic poem
Y GododdinY Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
, both dated around AD 700. In the Nordic Story
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
The Northmen drank Honey mead.
Mead was the historical beverage
par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in
Northern EuropeNorthern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. The United Nations defines Northern Europe as including the following countries and dependent regions:** ** ** Ireland** Svalbard and Jan Mayen** ** Channel Islands: and...
. Later, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some
monasteriesMonastery , a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer Monastery (plural: monasteries), a term derived from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος - monasterios...
kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of
beekeepingBeekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.-Origins:There are more than...
, especially in areas where
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
s could not be grown.
Etymology
The English word mead derives from the Old English
medu, from Proto-Germanic
meduz.
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead," (Slovak, Serbian, Macedonian, Chroatian:
med vs.
medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and
BalticThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
midus, which means "mead," also derive from the same
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
root (cf.
WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
medd, Old Irish mid, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
madhu).
Distribution
Mead was also popular in
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and in the Baltic states. In
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
mead is called
, meaning "drinkable honey." In
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
mead remained popular as
medovukhaMedovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
and
sbitenSbiten, also sbiten' is a hot winter Russian traditional drink. First mentioned in Slavonic chronicles in 1128, it remained popular with all stratas of Russian society until the 19th century when it was replaced by tea...
long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including
GogolNikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
,
DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (, Fёdor Mihajlovič Dosto'evskij, , sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, Dostoievsky, Dostojevskij, Dostoevski, Dostojevski or Dostoevskii ( – ) was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
and
TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
.
In
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
a sweet mead called
(
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
with
zymurgyZymurgy or zymology is the scientific study of fermentation. The word was originally used to describe the science involved in these processes, but has since become more broadly used to describe the brewing of alcoholic beverages...
) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish
VappuWalpurgis Night is a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origin, celebrated today by Christian and non-Christian communities as well, on April 30 or May 1 in large parts of Central and Northern Europe....
(
May DayMay Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations organised by the unions and socialist groups....
) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a
lemonThe lemon is a small evergreen tree originally native to Asia, and is also the name of the tree's oval yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
. During
secondary fermentationSecondary fermentation is a process commonly associated with winemaking, which entails a second period of fermentation in a different vessel than what was used when the fermentation process first started. An examples of this would be starting fermentation in a carboy or stainless steel tank and...
,
raisinRaisins are dried grapes. They are produced in many regions of the world, such as Armenia, the United States, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Macedonia, Mexico, Greece, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, China, Afghanistan, Togo, and Jamaica, as well as South Africa and Southern and...
s are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
n mead is called
tejTej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
(ጠጅ, ) and is usually home-made. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and bark of
gesho, a
hop-likeHumulus, is a small genus of flowering plants native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The female flowers of H. lupulus are known as hops, and are used as a culinary flavoring and stabilizer, especially in the brewing of beer...
bittering agent which is a species of
buckthornThe Buckthorns are a genus of about 100 species of shrubs or small trees from 1-10 m tall , in the buckthorn family Rhamnaceae. They are native throughout the temperate and subtropical Northern Hemisphere, and also more locally in the subtropical Southern Hemisphere in parts of Africa and South...
. A sweeter, less-alcoholic version called
berz, aged for a shorter time, is also made. The traditional vessel for drinking
tej is a rounded vase-shaped container called a
berele.
Mead known as iQhilika is traditionally prepared by the
XhosaThe Xhosa ) people are speakers of Bantu languages living in south-east South Africa, and in the last two centuries throughout the southern and central-southern parts of the country....
of
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland, while Lesotho is an independent country surrounded by South Africa.Modern...
.
Varieties
Mead can have a wide range of flavors, depending on the source of the honey, additives (also known as "adjuncts" or "
gruitGruit is an old-fashioned herb mixture used for bittering and flavoring beer, popular before the extensive use of hops. Gruit or grut ale may also refer to the beverage produced using gruit....
"), including fruit and spices, the yeast employed during fermentation, and aging procedure. Mead can be difficult to find commercially. Some producers have marketed white wine with added honey as mead, often spelling it "meade." This is closer in style to a
HypocrasHippocras , sometimes spelled hipocras or hypocras, is a drink made from wine, mixed with spices, most notably cinnamon, and possibly heated. Its invention was traditionally attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates , whose name would have been given to the concoction...
. Blended varieties of mead may be known by either style represented. For instance, a mead made with cinnamon and apples may be referred to as either a cinnamon cyser or an apple metheglin.
A mead that also contains spices (such as
cloveCloves are the aromatic dried flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae. Cloves are native to Indonesia and India and used as a spice in cuisine all over the world...
s,
cinnamonCinnamon is a small evergreen tree belonging to the family Lauraceae, native to Sri Lanka, or the spice obtained from the tree's bark...
or
nutmegNutmeg or Myristica fragrans is an evergreen tree indigenous to the Banda Islands in the Moluccas of Indonesia, or Spice Islands. Until the mid 19th century this was the world's only source...
), or
herbA herb is a plant that is valued for flavor, scent, or other qualities. Herbs are used in cooking, as medicines, and for spiritual purposes....
s (such as
oreganoOregano or is a species of Origanum, of the mint family, native to Europe, the Mediterranean region and southern and central Asia. It is a perennial herb, growing from 20-80 cm tall, with opposite leaves 1-4 cm long...
,
hopsHops are the female flower clusters, commonly called cones or strobiles, of the hop plant . The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis . They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other...
, or even
lavenderThe lavenders are a genus of 39 species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae, native to the Mediterranean region south to tropical Africa and to the southeast regions of India. The genus includes annuals, herbaceous plants, subshrubs, and small shrubs...
or
chamomileChamomile or camomile , is a common name for several daisy-like plants....
), is called a
metheglin .
A mead that contains fruit (such as
raspberryThe raspberry is the edible fruit of a multitude of plant species in the subgenus Idaeobatus of the genus Rubus; the name also applies to these plants themselves...
,
blackberryThe blackberry is an edible berry in the Rubus genus and the Rosaceae family. The fruit are botanically termed an aggregate fruit and they are produced on plants that typically have biennial canes and perennial roots. Blackberries and raspberries are also called caneberries or brambles...
or
strawberryFragaria is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits. There are more than 20 described species and many hybrids and cultivars. The most common strawberries grown commercially are cultivars of the Garden strawberry...
) is called a
melomel, which was also used as a means of
food preservationFood preservation is the process of treating and handling food to stop or greatly slow down spoilage caused or accelerated by micro-organisms. Some methods, however, use benign bacteria, yeasts or fungi to add specific qualities and to preserve food...
, keeping summer produce for the winter. A mead that is fermented with grape juice is called a
pyment.
MulledMulled wine, variations of which are popular around the world, is wine, usually red, combined with spices and typically served warm. Historically, wine often went bad. By adding spices and honey, it could be made drinkable again...
mead is a popular drink at Christmas time, where mead is flavored with spices (and sometimes various fruits) and warmed, traditionally by having a hot poker plunged into it.
Some meads retain some measure of the sweetness of the original honey, and some may even be considered as dessert wines. Drier meads are also available, and some producers offer sparkling meads. There are a number of faux-meads, which are actually cheap wines with large amounts of honey added, to produce a cloyingly sweet liqueur.
Historically, meads were fermented by wild
yeastYeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with about 1,500 species currently described; they dominate fungal diversity in the oceans. Most reproduce asexually by budding, although a few do so by binary fission...
s and
bacteriaThe bacteria are a large group of unicellular microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...
(as noted in the below quoted recipe) residing on the skins of the fruit or within the honey itself. Wild yeasts generally provide inconsistent results, and in modern times various brewing interests have isolated the strains now in use. Certain strains have gradually become associated with certain styles of mead. Mostly, these are strains that are also used in beer or wine production. However, several commercial labs, such as White Labs, WYeast, Vierka, have developed yeast strains specifically for mead.
Mead can be distilled to a brandy or liqueur strength.
KrupnikKrupnik, or Krupnikas as it is known in Lithuanian, is a traditional sweet alcohol similar to a liqueur, based on grain spirit and honey, popular in Poland and Lithuania. Mass produced versions consist of 40%-50% alcohol, but traditional versions will use 80% - 100% grain alcohol as the base...
is a sweet Polish liqueur made through such a process. A version of this called "honey jack" can be made by partly freezing a quantity of mead and pouring off the liquid without the ice crystals (a process known as freeze distillation), in the same way that
applejackApplejack is a strong alcoholic beverage produced from apples, originating from the American colonial period, and thought to originate from the French apple brandy Calvados. Applejack is made by concentrating hard cider, either by the traditional method of freeze distillation or by true evaporative...
is made from
ciderCider is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of apples. Although cider can be made from any variety of apple, certain cultivars are preferred in some regions, and these may be known as cider apples....
.
Mead variants
- Acan
Acan is the Mayan god of wine. He is identified with the local brew, balche, made from fermented honey to which the bark of the balche tree has been added....
A Native Mexican version of mead.
- Acerglyn — A mead made with honey and maple syrup.
- Braggot — Braggot (also called bracket or brackett). Originally brewed with honey and hops, later with honey and malt — with or without hops added. Welsh origin (bragawd).
- Black mead — A name sometimes given to the blend of honey and blackcurrant
The Blackcurrant is a species of Ribes berry native to central and northern Europe and northern Asia. It is also known as French "cassis"....
s.
- Capsicumel is a mead flavored with chile peppers.
- Chouchen
Chouchen is an alcoholic beverage popular in Brittany, France. A form of mead, it is made from the fermentation of honey in water. Chouchen normally contains 14% alcohol by volume. Traditionally, buckwheat honey is used, and this imparts chouchen's strong colour and pronounced flavour.Chouchen...
n is a kind of mead made in BrittanyBrittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Brittany was previously a kingdom and then as a duchy it was a fief of the Kingdom of France. It was at one time called Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
.
- Cyser — A blend of honey and apple
The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family Rosaceae. It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits...
juice fermented together; see also ciderCider is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of apples. Although cider can be made from any variety of apple, certain cultivars are preferred in some regions, and these may be known as cider apples....
.
- Czwórniak — A Polish mead, made using three units of water for each unit of honey
- Dwójniak — A Polish mead, made using equal amounts of water and honey
- Great mead — Any mead that is intended to be aged several years. The designation is meant to distinguish this type of mead from "short mead" (see below).
- Gverc or Medovina
Medovina is a Slavic alcoholic beverage made of honey similar to mead....
— CroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a country in southeast Europe, at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital is Zagreb...
n mead prepared in SamoborSamobor is a town in the Zagreb County, Croatia. It is part of the Zagreb metropolitan area.-Geography:Samobor is located west of Zagreb, between the eastern slopes of the Samoborsko gorje , in the Sava River valley.-Population:According the 2001 Croatian census, 36,207 people live in the...
and many other places. The word “gverc” or “gvirc” is from the GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
"" and refers to various spices added to mead.
- Hydromel — Hydromel literally means "water-honey" in Greek
Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
. It is also the FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
name for mead. (Compare with the SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
hidromiel and aquamiel, ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
idromele and PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...
hidromel). It is also used as a name for a very light or low-alcohol mead.
- Medica — Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central Europe bordering Italy to the west, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north...
n, CroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a country in southeast Europe, at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital is Zagreb...
n, variety of Mead.
- Medovina
Medovina is a Slavic alcoholic beverage made of honey similar to mead....
— CzechThe Czech Republic is a country in Central Europe that is sometimes considered to be Eastern European. The country borders Poland to the northeast, Germany to the west and northwest, Austria to the south and Slovakia to the east. The capital and largest city is Prague...
, SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a country located in both Central and Southeastern Europe. Its territory covers the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and central part of the Balkans...
n, BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a country in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe. Bulgaria borders five other countries: Romania to the north , Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia to the west, and Greece and Turkey to the south...
n, Bosnian and SlovakThe Slovak Republic is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe with a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia borders the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south. The largest city is its capital, Bratislava...
for mead. Commercially available in Czech Republic, Slovakia and presumably other Central and Eastern European countries.
- Medovukha
Medovukha is an Old Slavic honey-based alcoholic beverage very similar to mead. These two words are related and go back to the Proto-Indo-European *meddhe, honey...
— Eastern Slavic variant (honey-based fermented drink)
- Melomel — Melomel is made from honey and any fruit. Depending on the fruit-base used, certain melomels may also be known by more specific names (see cyser, pyment, morat for examples)
- Metheglin — Metheglin starts with traditional mead but has herbs and/or spices added. Some of the most common metheglins are ginger, tea
Tea is the agricultural product of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, prepared and cured by various methods...
, orangeAn orange—specifically, the sweet orange—is the citrus Citrus ×sinensis and its fruit. The orange is a hybrid of ancient cultivated origin, possibly between pomelo and tangerine...
peel, nutmegNutmeg or Myristica fragrans is an evergreen tree indigenous to the Banda Islands in the Moluccas of Indonesia, or Spice Islands. Until the mid 19th century this was the world's only source...
, corianderCoriander is an annual herb in the family Apiaceae. It is also known as Chinese parsley or, particularly in the Americas, cilantro. Coriander is native to southern Europe and North Africa to southwestern Asia. It is a soft, hairless plant growing to 50 cm [20 in.] tall...
, cinnamon, cloves or vanillaVanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla native to Mexico. Etymologically, vanilla derives from the Spanish word "", little pod. Originally cultivated by Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés is credited with introducing both the spice and...
. Its name indicates that many metheglins were originally employed as folk medicineFolk medicine refers to healing practices and ideas of body physiology and health preservation widely known to much of the population in a culture, transmitted informally as general knowledge, and practiced or applied by anyone in the culture . All cultures and societies have knowledge best...
s. The WelshWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia....
word for mead is , and the word "metheglin" derives from , a compound of , "healing" + , "liquor."
- Morat
Morat can refer to:* a type of mead made from honey and mulberries* Rose Morat of New York City, the victim of a high profile muggingIt is also the name given to:* the town of Morat, also known as Murten, in Switzerland...
— Morat blends honey and mulberriesMorus or Mulberry is a genus of 10–16 species of deciduous trees native to warm temperate and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, with the majority of the species native to Asia....
.
- Mulsum
Roman cuisine changed over the long duration of this ancient civilization. Dietary habits were affected by the influence of Greek culture, the political changes from kingdom to republic to empire, and empire's enormous expansion, which exposed Romans to many new, provincial culinary habits and...
— Mulsum is not a true mead, but is unfermented honey blended with a high-alcohol wine.
- Omphacomel — A mediæval mead recipe that blends honey with verjuice
Verjuice is a very acidic juice made by pressing unripe grapes. Sometimes lemon or sorrel juice, herbs or spices are added to change the flavour...
; could therefore be considered a variety of pyment (qv).
- Oxymel — Another historical mead recipe, blending honey with wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
vinegarVinegar is an acidic liquid processed from the fermentation of ethanol in a process that yields its key ingredient, acetic acid. It also may come in a diluted form. The acetic acid concentration typically ranges from 4 to 8 percent by volume for table vinegar and higher concentrations for pickling...
.
- Pitarrilla — Mayan
The Maya peoples constitute a diverse range of the Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. The overarching term "Maya" is a convenient collective designation to include the peoples of the region who share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the...
drink made from a fermented mixture of wild honey, balché treeLonchocarpus is a plant genus in the legume family . The species are called lancepods due to their fruit resembling an ornate lance tip or a few beads on a string....
bark and fresh water.
- Pyment — Pyment blends honey and red or white grapes. Pyment made with white grape juice is sometimes called "white mead."
- Półtorak — A Polish mead, made using two units of honey for each unit of water
- Rhodomel — Rhodomel is made from honey, rose hip
The rose hip and rose haw, is the pomaceous fruit of the rose plant, that typically is red-to-orange, but might be dark purple-to-black in some species...
s, petals or rose attarRose oil, meaning either rose otto or rose absolute, is the essential oil extracted from the petals of various types of rose...
and water.
- Sack mead — This refers to mead that is made with more copious amounts of honey than usual. The finished product retains an extremely high specific gravity
Relative density, sometimes called specific mass or specific gravity, is the ratio of the density of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity usually means relative density with respect to water...
and elevated levels of sweetness. It derives its name, according to one theory, from the fortifiedFortified wine is wine to which a distilled beverage has been added. When added to wine before the fermentation process is complete, the alcohol in the distilled beverage kills the yeast and leaves residual sugar behind. The end result is a wine that is both sweeter and stronger, normally...
dessert wineDessert wines are sweet wines typically served with dessert, such as Sauternes and Tokaji Aszú. Despite the name, they are often best appreciated alone, or with fruit or bakery sweets.There is no simple definition of a dessert wine...
SherrySherry is a fortified wine made from white grapes that are grown near the town of Jerez, Spain. In Spanish, it is called vino de Jerez. Sherry is regarded by some wine critics as "underappreciated" and a "neglected wine treasure"....
(which is sometimes sweetened after fermentation and in England once bore the nickname of "sack"); another theory is that the term derived from the Japanese drink sakeSake or saké is a Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice.This beverage is called sake in English, but in Japanese, sake or o-sake refers to alcoholic drinks in general. The Japanese term for this specific beverage is Nihonshu , meaning "Japanese sake".Sake is also referred to in English as...
, being introduced by Spanish and Portuguese traders.
- Short mead — Also called "quick mead." A type of mead recipe that is meant to age quickly, for immediate consumption. Because of the techniques used in its creation, short mead shares some qualities found in cider (or even light ale): primarily that it is effervescent
Carbonation occurs when carbon dioxide is dissolved in water or an aqueous solution. This process yields the "fizz" to carbonated water, sparkling mineral water, and soft drinks; the head to beer; and the cork pop and bubbles to champagne and sparkling wine.-Effervescence:Effervescence is the...
, and often has a cidery taste. It can also be champagne-like.
- Show mead — A term which has come to mean "plain" mead: that which has honey and water as a base, with no fruits, spices or extra flavorings. Since honey alone often does not provide enough nourishment for the yeast to carry on its lifecycle, a mead that is devoid of fruit, etc. will sometimes require a special yeast nutrient and other enzyme
Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process are called substrates, and the enzyme converts them into different molecules, called the products. Almost all processes in a biological cell need enzymes to occur at...
s to produce an acceptable finished product. In most competitions (including all those using the BJCP style guidelines as well as the International Mead Fest) the term "traditional mead" is used for this variety.
- Sima
Sima is a sweet mead, still an essential seasonal, sparkling brew connected with the Finnish Vappu festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the flesh and rind of a lemon...
- a quickly-fermented Finnish variety, seasoned with lemon and associated with the festival of vappu.
- Tej
Tej is a mead or honey wine brewed and consumed in Ethiopia. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and twigs of gesho , a hops-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn....
— Tej is an Ethiopian mead, fermented with wild yeasts (and bacteria), and with the addition of gesho. Recipes vary from family to family, with some recipes leaning towards braggot with the inclusion of grains.
- Trójniak — A Polish mead, made using two units of water for each unit of honey.
Recipes
Festivals
- International Mead Festival — Sponsored by the International Mead Association, this festival is held every year on the weekend closest to Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day or Saint Valentine's Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14 by many people throughout the world. In the English-speaking countries, it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending Valentine's cards, presenting flowers, or offering...
in or near Denver, ColoradoColorado is a U.S. state located in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States of America. It may also be considered to be part of the Western and Southwestern regions of the United States. Colorado entered statehood in 1876 and was nicknamed the “Centennial State”...
. It claims to be the largest and most prestigious mead festival in the world. Both professional and home-brewed meads are judged.
- Real Ale Festival in Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and with more than 2.8 million people, the 3rd largest city in the United States...
, Illinois, includes categories for mead as well as ciderCider is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of apples. Although cider can be made from any variety of apple, certain cultivars are preferred in some regions, and these may be known as cider apples....
and perryPerry is an alcoholic beverage made of fermented pear juice. It is similar to cider, in that it is made using a similar process and often has a similar alcoholic content, up to 8.5% alcohol by volume...
.
- Woodbridge International Mead Festival - Sponsored by local residents, it claims to be the only mead festival east of the Mississippi. While there are relatively few types of mead available, all are home-brewed and go through a rigorous judging process.
In literature
Mead features prominently in several of the works of
Neil GaimanNeil Richard Gaiman is an English author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, audio theatre, and films. His notable works include The Sandman comic series, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
. Early in the novel
American GodsAmerican Gods is a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel by Neil Gaiman. The novel is a blend of Americana, fantasy, and various strands of ancient and modern mythology, all centering on a mysterious and taciturn protagonist, Shadow. It is Gaiman's fourth prose novel, being preceded by Good Omens ,...
, the protagonist drinks a particularly unpleasant round of mead (colorfully described as tasting of "
drunkenAlcohol intoxication is a physiological state occurring when an organism has a high level of ethyl alcohol in its bloodstream, or when ethyl alcohol otherwise causes a physiological effect...
diabetic'sDiabetes mellitus —often referred to simply as diabetes—is a condition in which the body either does not produce enough, or does not properly respond to, insulin, a hormone produced in the pancreas. Insulin enables cells to absorb glucose in order to turn it into energy...
pissUrine is a liquid waste product of the body secreted by the kidneys by a process of filtration from blood called urination and excreted through the urethra. Cellular metabolism generates numerous waste compounds, many rich in nitrogen, that require elimination from the bloodstream...
") with his new employer
Mr. WednesdayOdin , is considered the chief god in Norse paganism and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon Wōden and the Old High German Wotan, it is descended from Proto-Germanic *Wōđinaz or *Wōđanaz.The name Odin is generally accepted as the modern translation; although, in some cases, older...
to seal their contract. It is also a favorite drink of the title character of Gaiman's
Sandman series.
In the novel
The Wolves of Willoughby ChaseThe Wolves of Willoughby Chase is a children's novel by Joan Aiken, first published in 1963. Set in an alternate history of England, it tells of the adventures of cousins Bonnie and Sylvia and their friend Simon the goose-boy as they thwart the evil schemes of their governess Miss Slighcarp.The...
by
Joan AikenJoan Delano Aiken was an English novelist. She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, Conrad Aiken , and her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge...
, Bonnie and Sylvia are offered metheglin to hearten them for the walk.
In the Eragon inheritance books mead is the most often drank liquid (other than water)
In the novel
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by
J. K. RowlingJoanne "Jo" Murray, OBE , better known under the pen name J. K. Rowling , is a British author best known as the creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series, the idea for which was conceived whilst on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990...
, Professor Slughorn shares a bottle of mead with Harry and Ron which he had originally intended to give to Dumbledore for Christmas; Ron is nearly killed upon drinking the beverage, which had been poisoned.
In the
Thomas PynchonThomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist based in New York City and noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University...
novel
Gravity's RainbowGravity's Rainbow is a postmodern novel written by Thomas Pynchon and first published on February 28 1973.The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest...
, the character Pirate Prentice serves homemade banana mead at his "Banana Breakfasts."
Eckbert Attquiet (a 63 year old medieval re-enactor) eschews the trappings of modern life, and is diligently inebriated on home-made mead or melomel throughout
Tod Wodicka'sTod Wodicka is an American author residing in Berlin. He graduated from the University of Manchester in the UK...
tragicomic novel
All Shall be Well; and All Shall be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall be Well.
Mead is the favorite beverage of the skin-changer
BeornIn J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, Beorn was a shape-shifter , a man who could assume the appearance of a great black bear.-Literature:...
in Tolkien's
The HobbitThe Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in a time "Between the Dawn of Færie and the Dominion of Men", The Hobbit follows the quest of home-loving Bilbo Baggins to win a share of the treasure guarded by the dragon, Smaug...
.
Mead is featured in
BeowulfBeowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden...
, where the main character fights the evil
GrendelGrendel is one of three antagonists, along with Grendel's mother and the dragon, in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf . In the poem, Grendel is feared by all but Beowulf.-Story:The poem Beowulf is contained in the Nowell Codex...
at the mead-hall. Mead is Beowulf's beverage of choice while merrymaking in the mead-hall.
- See also: Mead of Poetry
In Norse mythology, the Mead of Poetry , also known as Mead of Suttungr , is a mythical beverage that whoever "drinks becomes a skald or scholar" to recite any information and solve any question. This myth was reported by Snorri Sturluson ...
(Norse mythologyNorse, North Germanic, or Scandinavian mythology comprises the myths of North Germanic pre-Christian religion.Most of the written sources for Norse mythology were assembled in medieval Iceland in Old Norse, notably as the Edda....
)
See also
- History of alcohol
The purposeful production of alcoholic beverages is common in many cultures and often reflects their cultural and religious peculiarities as much as their geographical and sociological conditions....
- Honey
Honey is a sweet food made by some insects using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
- Mead hall
In ancient Scandinavia a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room. From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king...
External links