What Is Mead? A Simple Guide to One of the World’s Oldest Alcoholic Drinks
Mention mead and people tend to have very different reactions. Some know it as one of the world’s oldest fermented drinks. Others picture something medieval, served from a drinking horn and probably very sweet. And plenty of people simply ask:
What actually is mead?
The simple answer is that mead is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting honey with water. But just as knowing that wine is made from grapes doesn’t tell you whether you’re about to drink Champagne, Sauvignon Blanc or Port, that definition only tells you where mead begins.
The category is much more varied than many people realise.
What Is Mead Made From?
Honey is the defining ingredient in mead.
Traditionally, honey is mixed with water and fermented using yeast. During fermentation, the yeast consumes fermentable sugars and converts them into alcohol, creating the finished drink.
From that basic starting point, producers can create very different styles. Fruit, herbs, spices and other ingredients can be incorporated, and choices made during fermentation can influence sweetness, strength, carbonation, aroma and flavour.
That’s why two drinks described as mead can taste remarkably different from one another.
Is Mead Always Sweet?
No, and this is probably the biggest misconception surrounding mead.
Honey is naturally sweet, but fermentation changes what happens to its sugars. Depending on how the mead is made, more or less residual sweetness can remain in the finished drink.
As a result, mead can range from sweet to completely dry, just as wine and cider can.
It can also be still or sparkling, delicate or intensely flavoured, relatively light or considerably stronger.
So if your only impression of mead is a heavy, very sweet drink, you’ve experienced one possible style rather than the whole category.
What Does Mead Taste Like?
There isn’t one universal “mead taste”.
A traditional honey-led mead may retain recognisable floral or honeyed characteristics, but the finished flavour depends on the honey, fermentation, sweetness level and any additional ingredients used.
A fruit mead can be bright and fruit-led. A spiced mead can be aromatic. A dry sparkling mead can feel considerably lighter and fresher than many people expect.
This variety is part of what makes the category interesting: mead describes how a drink is made more than it describes one particular flavour.
Is Mead a Wine?
You’ll sometimes hear the term “honey wine” used to explain mead, but mead isn’t grape wine.
Wine is made by fermenting grapes, while mead uses honey as its defining fermentable ingredient.
The two categories can share characteristics. Both can be dry or sweet, still or sparkling, and both can work with food. But their fundamental ingredients are different.
Beer is different again, generally beginning with grains such as barley, while cider begins with apples.
If you’d like to explore those differences in more detail, read our guide to mead vs beer, wine and cider.
How Strong Is Mead?
There isn’t one standard alcohol strength for mead.
Different styles and fermentation methods can produce very different ABVs, so the best approach is to check the particular bottle you’re drinking rather than assume all meads have the same strength.
BARHI, for example, is 6% ABV, deliberately placing it at a lighter drinking strength than many people’s preconception of mead.
Is Mead Gluten-Free?
Traditional mead begins with honey and water rather than gluten-containing grains, so its core ingredients are naturally gluten-free.
However, mead is a broad category and additional ingredients and production processes can vary between producers. Anyone for whom gluten avoidance is important should therefore check the information for the particular product.
BARHI is naturally gluten-free and is made without gluten-containing grains such as wheat or barley.
Our guide to whether BARHI is gluten-free explains this in more detail.
What Is Modern Mead?
The history of mead may be ancient, but modern producers aren’t restricted to recreating historical styles.
Today the category includes fruit meads, botanical and spiced expressions, sparkling styles and drinks produced at a range of alcohol strengths and sweetness levels.
For us, that’s one of the most exciting things about mead.
Its defining ingredient provides a starting point rather than a rule for what the final drinking experience has to be.
And that’s where BARHI enters the story.
So Is BARHI a Mead?
Yes.
BARHI is made by fermenting fresh Barhee dates and honey, which means it sits legally within the mead category.
But if you’ve arrived at BARHI expecting the stereotypical sweet, heavy mead, the experience in the glass may be surprising.
BARHI is dry, lightly sparkling and 6% ABV. We describe it to consumers as a Fresh Date Spritz because that better communicates how it actually drinks.
BARHI Original combines fresh Barhee dates and honey for a clean, crisp and refreshing profile, while BARHI Spiced adds star anise and orange peel for a more aromatic expression. At the table, Original works particularly well where chilli heat leads the dish, while Spiced is particularly suited to seafood, rich creamy gravies and BBQ or grilled food. Both demonstrate an important point about mead: starting with honey doesn’t dictate how the finished drink has to taste.
An Ancient Idea with Plenty of Room to Evolve
Perhaps the easiest way to understand mead is not to think of it as one particular flavour.
Think of it as a fermentation category.
Honey provides the foundation, but the producer, ingredients and fermentation choices determine where the drink goes from there.
Some meads celebrate honey prominently. Some are sweet. Some are strong. Others are dry, sparkling, fruit-led or spiced.
BARHI takes that flexibility in its own direction, combining honey with fresh Barhee dates to create a drink developed around food.
If you’d like to understand where BARHI fits alongside beer, wine and cider, explore our comparison guide. Or discover What Is BARHI? for the complete introduction to the Fresh Date Spritz.
You can also explore BARHI Original and BARHI Spiced, or find BARHI near you.
Made for the love of food. Brewed for the celebration of laughter.
