My first exposure to mead was in Ireland in the early 1990s. Bunratty Castle in County Clare, to be exact. Attending a medieval banquet, we were greeted with goblets of mead as we entered the Great Hall. I was immediately hooked on this potent, slightly sweet honey wine. Believed to enhance fertility and virility, mead is a traditional Irish wedding drink. In fact, the term “honeymoon” arises from a long-ago custom for newlyweds to drink mead for one full moon after their wedding to secure a fruitful marriage.
Many believe that this beverage made from fermented honey was likely stumbled upon by accident, perhaps as a bee’s nest in a hollow filled up with rainwater, and the honey and water then became fermented by airborne wild yeast. Most agree that mead is actually the world’s first alcoholic beverage as its history is documented to date back thousands of years. Mentions of mead can be found in Egyptian manuscripts, Greek mythology, Nordic poems, and Celtic legend, and ancient mead-making methods are described across Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Meads can vary from bone-dry to cloyingly sweet, so if your only experience has been the latter, now is the time to expand your mead horizons. Last year my friend Rhonni gifted me a bottle from an Arizona meadery thinking it would be something I would like. She surely knows me well as she had no idea that I was a fan of mead, and I had no idea that mead was being produced locally. She and her husband had been wine tasting at The Wine Cellar (now closed) in Old Town Cottonwood. They were intrigued by the selection of meads, tried four of them, and were duly impressed. That bottle she bought me was “Lagrimas de Oro” from Prescott's Superstition Meadery.
