Magical Mead
Mead - or fermented honey - is probably the oldest alcoholic drink known to man. Made from nectar collected from flowers by bees and taken back to their hives for winter nourishment, honey is believed to have been the earliest form of natural food.
Historians tell us that people in the Egyptian, Greek and Roman Empires fermented honey to make alcohol and there is evidence that the ancient British tribes made what we now call mead, sometimes referred to as ‘elixir of life’. Claims of its energising effects have been recorded along with its stimulating effect on sexual energy and, in particular, fertility.
It is now thought that the underclasses were undernourished and as honey is actually a food containing vitamins, protein, iron, calcium and natural sugars as well as trace elements, the mead could have been instrumental in boosting energy, revitalising the system and making people feel healthy and vigorous. No wonder that it was regarded as a magic tonic!
A Saxon honeymoon
By the eighth century when King Alfred was ruling Britain, the history books refer to feast days and special occasions when mead was drunk in celebration. This appears to have been when the word 'honeymoon’ came into the British language. At the time it was customary to celebrate a marriage by drinking copious amounts of mead and eating honey-cake for the period of a moon's waxing and waning - a whole ‘lunar’ month. Mead was the magic intoxicating component. This, they believed, would make the union productive. We can only guess at the appreciation showered on the accomplished mead-maker at the birth of the first-born.
Between 1000 and 1400 AD we know that great quantities of mead were made in England, particularly by the skilful monks in the abbeys, alongside the usual country wines, ales and cordials
Bee-keeping was part of agricultural life and the production of mead from the hive contents was routine domestic scullery-work. At that time it was the only source of sweetening used by country-folk until the importation of sugar cane, which, initially, was expensive and inaccessible to ordinary classes.
Gin takes over from home winemaking
When imported wines began arriving from the Continent, mead, in common with other domestic beverages, fell out of favour and the art of home winemaking declined. Tea took over as the national English beverage and a little later, cheap gin arrived in abundance from the Low Countries. Around 1750, at the start of the industrial revolution, many farm labourers left the fields to work in urban factories, forsaking their beehives. The ancient skills rapidly declined, along with other rustic crafts.
Just after the First World War, many people began taking an interest in bee-keeping and amateur winemaking; so a renaissance in making mead took place. Many discovered the fascinating alchemy of fermenting honey in different variations, producing Melomel (fruit juice in the fermenting bin); Hyppocras, using grape-juice and Metheglyn, adding spice and herbs, unusual, but delicious concoctions.
Small wonder then, that, as a veteran meadmaker, I regard this particular variety of home brew as the most outstanding of them all.
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