Wine Not?

Colorado Makes Merry with Mead - February 2007, The Yellow Scene, VOLUME 7, ISSUE 2

Nothing distinguishes a fine meal like a fine wine. The liquid grape has accompanied meals for thousands of years, enhancing flavors and relaxing diners of all countries and cultures around the world. Yet wine is still a relative newcomer when compared to the first fermented beverage. With roots reaching as far back as the 8th century B.C., for a real taste of history, try mead.

Mead is usually given the distinction of being man's oldest alcoholic beverage.

It is certainly one of the simplest, and it often gets left off the table by many beer aficionados.

Often called honey wine, it is, in its simplest form, just fermented honey and water. This is one of the reasons it's thought to be the first common form of alcohol. Even before we settled down in an agrarian society to cultivate grains for beer or the quantity of grapes needed to make wine, honey was pretty easy to find.

Beverage World - March 15, 2005

Just like honey Mead emerges from the Dark Ages.

The word "mead" generally evokes images of Chaucer, Beowulf and the friendly neighborhood Renaissance Fair, but the rapidly increasing number of mead makers in the US and abroad are hoping to make it more mainstream than medieval.

"We always refer to it as the oldest beverage no one's ever heard of," says David Myers, "chairman of the mead" at Boulder, CO, USA-based Redstone Meadery.

Slowly but surely that's been changing, thanks to the efforts of Redstone, which founded the International Mead Association (IMA), also based in Boulder.

NewScientist.com news service

World's earliest tipple discovered in China

Fermented beverages made from honey, grapes and hawthorn fruit were stored in vessels sometimes found at burial sites (Image: Zhiqing Zhang, Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Henan Province)

Chemical tests on ancient fragments of broken pottery show that Chinese villagers were brewing alcoholic drinks as far back as 7000 BC. That beats the previous record for the oldest evidence of brewing, found in Iran and dated at about 5400 BC.

The oldest known Chinese texts, from the Shang dynasty period of 1200 BC to 1046 BC, mention three types of alcoholic drink. Archaeologists had suspected that fermented drinks had been developed much earlier because older bronze vessels and pottery resembled those used for the Shang dynasty drinks.

Daily Camera

International Mead Festival, new trade association hope to promote glories of honey wine

A guy walks into a bar.

He says to the bartender: "I'd like a glass of off-dry mead. What do you recommend?"

OK, so there's no punchline here, but mead makers locally and nationally are hoping mead becomes a part of the cultural vernacular at least as well-known as this classic opening line to a joke.

To that end, mead makers will be participating in the third International Mead Festival to be held in Boulder Friday and Saturday, and also are setting up an International Mead Association, in hopes of making mead a household word and a sought-out beverage.

Honeymooners test sweet sex brew

By CNN's Jane Chattoe
Friday, May 30, 2003 Posted: 8:52 AM EDT (1252 GMT)

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A group of scientists has been inundated with requests after calling for newlyweds to test the legendary aphrodisiac effects of an ancient honey-based drink.

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) wants one couple to drink honey mead -- a fermented mixture of honey and water -- every night for 30 days after taking their vows in June and to keep a diary of their honeymoon relationship.

The UK's professional body for chemists has received more than 100 phone calls from couples who want to take part in the experiment following a media appeal. The results will be published later in the year.