Mead: Drink of kings

Mead may have ancient origins, but you don't have to be a caveman to enjoy it.

As soon as I discovered that mead existed, I wanted to try it. Just the idea of honey wine is a delicious one - and the reality doesn't disappoint: mead is mellow, earthy, and sweet. It has all the good qualities you would expect from a wine made out of the best natural form of sugar.

But there is something more: to me, it tastes medieval. If there's any drink that makes you want to don a fur tunic and dance an estampie in the courtyard, or call "off with their 'eds" while you tuck into another pheasant, it's mead. 

Although I associate the flavour of mead with the middle ages, its origins are much older. Archaeologists have discovered traces of a mixture of honey, rice and other fruits along with 'organic compounds of fermentation' in neolithic pottery found in Northern China, which could attest to an early form of mead (...or a dollop of Marmite in an ancient Chinese soup). Early origins aside, there is written evidence of mead from 1700 BC, and we know it was enjoyed by the ancient Greeks and Romans too.

But while mead has now become a rare drink with historic connotations, it's no surprise that it enjoyed such popularity in the past. After all, honey would have been a key source of concentrated sugar before sugar cane and beet.

Last year, I made a variation of mead called 'melomel' - fruit mead. For the fruit element, I used a mass of rusty-coloured rosehips foraged from local hedgerows. I boiled them up to create a vat of rosehip tea, and also included a bag of spice (as a sort of bouquet garni) including cinnamon, cloves, and star anise.

Once the rosehips had been strained from the 'tea' and the liquid had cooled off, I added honey and yeast.

Fermentation was rapid and effervescent - I've never seen such a lively wine! - but by late spring fermenation had calmed to the occasional bubble, and in late August it was ready to bottle.

After years of homebrews that taste of slightly questionable sherry, I think we've hit the jackpot. No gag-reflex and no aftertaste of drain-cleaner, melomel is delicious, rounded, palatable and subtle. It's no wonder mead was so popular in the past, and I'm looking forward to making it again this year!