Mead – Alberta’s Gold by MARGAUX BURGESS
For over ten thousand years people have been producing and consuming mead. Arguably it is the oldest fermented beverage in the world, with the earliest production dating to 8,000 BC.
While often associated with Beowulf, Renaissance Fairs, and Scandinavian folklore, where it is always the drink of choice, mead remains relatively under the radar and is still a rather esoteric beverage choice. At its simplest, mead is fermented honey. You can imagine how it first came about – honey harvested by some ancient civilization left out in the rain to collect water, some rogue yeast discovering that sugar source, a little bit of time and a little bit of human curiosity. The fermentable sugars are transformed into ethanol and we have mead. The process is very similar to the fermentation of wine and often mead is labeled as honey wine. Also like wine, mead can be fermented to any level of dryness, from sweet to bone-dry. Honey really is magical stuff. With approximately the same sweetness as table sugar, it is a much healthier and natural alternative with many uses. The strong concentration of sugars is inhospitable to bacteria and its ability to pull water from its surrounding area, and hence any microbes present in the surrounding area makes for known antibacterial properties. As far back as the ancient Egyptians, it has been used as a topical antiseptic and antibiotic. Honey also has a true sense-of-place, that ‘somewhereness’ that means you can get a taste of where the honey came from – its terroir. Clover honey tastes different from wildflower honey, as honey from Australia tastes different than honey from Alberta. Trace elements from the plants provide these different flavour profiles that are then translated into the glass.
28
Like different grapes give different attributes in wine, different honey gives different flavour characteristics in mead.
