The world’s favourite honey drink is getting pretty buzzy.
As Matthew McConnaughey drawled through his weird moustache in True Detective, time is a flat circle. Shuffling towards the end of 2024, it seems the past is repeating everywhere we look: the mullet has long since ridden back into the mainstream, low-rise jeans are all over the place, country music is having yet another moment and – who woulda thought it? – mead is back on the menu. Yep, the honey-based beverage of vikings and fantasy warriors is hitting the big time in the digital age. And frankly, we’re all about it.
While mead is a traditional choice in the holiday season, the stats show that the honey drink has been positively trending all across the past few years and the market is expected to nearly triple in size by 2032. As the world’s bees prepare for busy times ahead, we thought it was a good time to give you the lowdown on the mead trend.
Mead is a drink made from fermented honey and we humans have been drinking it for thousands of years (estimates range from 6000 years ago to a whopping 40,000), making it probably the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world. To make mead, all you need is honey, water and yeast, giving it a pretty good reward-for-effort ratio, even for our early ancestors. This (and the fact that it’s bloody delicious) might explain why mead has been popular with everyone from the ancient Romans and the vikings to former Disney Channel stars. Yep, even Dylan Sprouse is all about it, having gone into making the stuff full-time.
Although making mead follows a simple formula, it’s anything but basic in the glass. You might be familiar with Australian classics of the genre like Maxwell’s honey mead (the spiced version is a nice twist, too) and Daringa, all of which are sweet, still and have an alcohol content similar to wine (around the 10 to 12% mark).
Mead, though, comes in a huge variety of styles beyond these long-time staples. It can be still or sparkling, dry or sweet, flavoured with additives like fruits, flowers and spices (like the blackcurrant-infused berry mead from Bartholemews or Honey Wines Australia’s orange and pink grapefruit mead) or simply left to evoke the base honey, which draws its spectrum of flavours from the different flowers visited by those busy bees. And mead doesn’t have to be wine-like in its alcohol content, either, ranging from nearly non-alcoholic to over 12% ABV.
There are plenty of ancient ferments that have been relegated to obscurity (sorry, garum), so why are modern makers like Golden Hive Mead racking up millions of Instagram followers with mead content? Well, there are a few reasons.
First off – and this should come as no surprise – mead has ridden back into town on the wave of recent fantasy TV shows. Sure, LARPers have an understandable thing for mead (and more than a few are making it themselves), but shows like Vikings and Game of Thrones brought fantasy to the everyday masses, making all its tropes – like killing off main characters and drinking mead from a goblet – pretty cool.
It’s also fair to say that, particularly for younger generations, questing for new flavours is a lot of fun. For those of us who rode the craft beer boom from west coast IPAs to pastry stouts, the constant flow of new brews made it easy to turn beer from a casual drink into a full-blown hobby. Craft mead is a logical extension, with new producers cropping up and taking advantage of the drink’s versatility. Take Three Horn Brewing in Victoria, with their dry, barrel-aged Viking Blood mead that infuses cherry, pomegranate and hibiscus. Or Tasmanian brewery Taverner’s, getting creative with their inventive blend of single malt Tassie whisky and aged mead.
You might throw a few other reasons into the mix, too. Mead is naturally gluten free and can be pretty low in alcohol (some are barely alcoholic) which lines up with the recent rise of low- and no-alcohol drinks. And, leaning into our contemporary climate concern, mead is also one of the more environmentally friendly drinks to make, requiring less water to produce than beer, and needing little more than a hive of happy bees in order to source the basic materials. Yeah, mead is great.
Alright, alright – you’re on the mead train now. If you’re wondering how to drink mead or where to find it, you’re very much in luck. You might fancy picking up a bottle from your Uncle Dan and serving it chilled in a wine glass (a great and foolproof place to start). But if you’re hoping to really dive into the trend, it’s well worth visiting a local meadery. We mentioned Three Horn in Victoria and Taverner’s in Tassie, but most states will have their own (if not a whole bunch), and making the trip can mean the chance to sample across the drink’s various styles and learn more about how it goes from flower to flagon.
With more bars stocking mead, it’s also a good idea to find somewhere nearby to sip and sample – particularly if you’re keen to see the different ways mead can be served. A good place to start is with simple serves that highlight the variety of styles and flavours available, which we’re seeing at Melbourne and Sydney’s viking-themed Mjølner (where you’ll find eight varieties), on tap at Wandering Trout Taphouse in Tassie, and outside the city bustle at Healesville Hotel, where you’ll find local honey mead from the Yarra Valley.
