Mead ( ) is a typically alcoholic beverage, made from honey and water via fermentation with yeast. Its alcoholic content may range from that of a mild ale to that of a strong wine. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling. It may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet.

Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. It may be produced by fermentation of honey with grain mash; mead may also, like beer, be flavored with hops to produce a bitter, beer-like flavor.

Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; ""it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil." Claude Lévi-Strauss makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture".

History

Archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates back to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China.

The first known description of mead is in the hymns of the Rigveda,Rigveda Book 5 v. 43:3–4, Book 8 v. 5:6, etc one of the sacred books of the historical Vedic religion and (later) Hinduism dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the "Golden Age" of Ancient Greece, mead was said to be the preferred drink. Aristotle (384–322 BC) discussed mead in his Meteorologica and elsewhere, while Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) called mead militites in his Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead. Columella the Roman-Hispanic naturalist, gave a recipe for mead in ''De re rustica, about AD 60.

Around AD 550, the Cumbric speaking bard Taliesin wrote the lang: Kanu y med or "Song of Mead."Llyfr Taliesin XIX The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the mead hall is echoed in the mead hall Dyn Eidyn (modern day Edinburgh), and in the epic poem Y Gododdin, both dated around AD 700 . The Heorot in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf also was known to host the drinking of mead.

Mead was the historical beverage par excellence and commonly brewed by the Germanic tribes in Northern Europe.Fact: date=August 2008 However, heavy taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercially made mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some monasteries kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping, especially in areas where grapes could not be grown.