Mead or Honey Wine

Mead or Honey Wine

Mead is a fermented alcoholic beverage made of honey, water, and yeast. Meadhing is the practice of brewing honey. Mead is also colloquially known as "honey wine". A brewery that deals specifically in mead is called either a meadery or a mazery.

A mead that also contains spices (like cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg) or herbs (such as oregano or even lavender or chamomile) is called metheglin. The English usage is derived from the Old English medu, from Proto-Germanic meduz. Slavic miod / med, which means "honey" and Baltic *midus, which means "mead", derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root (cf Welsh medd, Old Irish mid).

A mead that contains fruit (such as strawberry, blackcurrant or even rose hips) is called melomel and was also used as a means of food preservation, keeping summer produce for the winter. A mead that contains specifically grape juice is called pyment.

Mulled mead is a popular winter holiday drink, where mead is flavored with spices (and sometimes various fruits) and warmed, traditionally by having a hot poker plunged into it.