 Many fine meads are still bottled in ceramic, as they have been for centuries |
If you’re a connoisseur of fine drink, you may know that one of the newest hip beverage trends is mead. Which is interesting, because mead is probably also the oldest hip beverage trend, with the earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead suggesting it was first made in China around 7000 BC. According to Wikipedia, the word mead is derived from the Old English “medu”, from the Proto-Germanic meduz. Many languages have a similar name for the brew – the Slavic “med” or “miod”, the Polish “miód”, the Welsh “medd”, or Sanskrit “madhu” – but almost universally the word means “honey” or “drinkable honey” as in the case of the Polish “miód pitny”. For most of us the word “mead” conjures images of Viking conquests or medeival banquets with men wearing chain mail sitting around a rough wooden table with a leg of mutton in one hand and a huge mug of frothy, thick sustenance in the other. Or that peculiar couple at the office that’s always going to renaissance festivals. This reputation is rapidly changing though, as more people begin to explore the complex history and remarkable variety of mead making methods. And in spite of the explosive growth of mead making (over 100 new meaderies in the US in the last decade) you may have trouble finding a genuine “expert”; the rarity of quality mead due to alcoholic beverage regulations, combined with its multitudinous regional styles and long history, and now the boom of new mead making, makes it hard for a single individual to really stay abreast of both the complex history and current trends in mead. So we won’t play the expert here, we’ll just let you know what we have in stock and provide links to the producers’ sites. That is, if we can find an English version; many of the finest meads are from Poland or Denmark. Below is what we have on hand as of this writing.