Honey, wake up: mead abuzz with a new lease of life

Forget everything you thought you knew about mead — Gosnells is rewriting the rules. Light, sparkling and refreshingly modern, it’s a bold new take on an ancient drink, writes Declan Ryder. The post Honey, wake up: mead abuzz with a new lease of life appeared first on The Drinks Business.

Apr 22, 2025 - 08:40

Honey, wake up: mead abuzz with a new lease of life

Forget everything you thought you knew about mead — Gosnells is rewriting the rules. Light, sparkling and refreshingly modern, it’s a bold new take on an ancient drink, writes Declan Ryder. Monks praying before eating and drinking mead, they themselves brewed - Scanned 1894 Engraving

Most of us know mead as the forgotten medieval tipple that faded into complete insignificance centuries ago. It is discussed in conversation much in the same light as other now obsolete relics like trebuchets and chamber pots. Though once relegated to obscurity around the Renaissance, mead has enjoyed a mini renaissance of its own in the past 10-20 years, moving out of the history books and back onto the palettes. The mead industry was declared the fastest-growing drinks category in the US in 2017. There are now around 250 meaderies across the pond – a figure that only increases year on year. And globally, the appetite is increasing too: Fortune Business Insights projects the global market to grow from US$591.5 million in 2024 to US$1,395.7 million by 2032, at an annual growth rate of 11.33%. But while many hail this as a great revival, Tom Gosnell, founder of one of the UK’s leading meaderies, sees things very differently. “I haven’t seen a resurgence of mead, at least in the UK,” he says. “There’s not that many producers, and they’re all quite small.” This is the tension at the heart of mead’s modern moment: it may be the world’s oldest alcoholic drink, but its future may depend on forgetting its past.

Rebranding mead for a new generation

Gosnell started making mead from his London kitchen in 2014. Now, over a decade later, he runs one of the biggest mead brands in the country. In March of last year, they opted to rebrand from ‘mead’ to ‘nectar’, sensing that the very term mead was proving a buzzkill to prospective customers. “Calling it ‘mead’ was only holding us back, to be honest,” Gosnell says. “Our rate of sale went through the roof immediately [after the rebrand].” He believes if there is to be any true resurgence in mead drinking, it means veering away from its historic connotations, rather than into them. Rather than tailoring their target market to history buffs like many of their competitors, their focus lies solely on the drink and aims to appeal to those who don’t like beer but still want to drink a pint. “We wanted to talk about the liquid and the natural side of things,” Gosnell says. “We’ve always done this session style of mead called nectar, which is much more approachable and easy to drink.”

Bringing mead to the people

To truly give their nectar a voice, Gosnells are preparing for a big sampling campaign in the summer, with 15-20 pop-up bars throughout London. The company will supply the venues with kegs at wholesale prices, handling the staffing and sampling themselves. It’s a tactical move aimed at converting the curious who might not have yet thought of mead as a drink for today. “We believe as a team that good brands are built in the on-trade rather than the off-trade. That’s where you go for new experiences,” he says. Yet despite Gosnells' bold steps towards a contemporary identity, mead's history is rich, spanning millennia and leaving behind a legacy that's far from forgotten. Widely regarded as the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage, mead is believed to have been discovered as long ago as 20,000 BC in Africa through the natural fermentation of honey and rainwater. The first tangible proof of its existence dates from around 7000 BC, with archaeologists having found traces in ancient Chinese pottery vessels. Throughout the following millennia, it was a favourite drink of the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks, lauded by the latter as “the nectar of the Gods”.

The Viking myth and monastic reality

It is now mainly affiliated with the Vikings, conjuring images of six-foot-something hairy behemoths chugging tankards of the stuff with wild abandon. While the Vikings were indeed partial to the beverage, this is a rather reductive picture. Mead played a vital role in the economy of several societies. Monasteries across Europe brewed mead both as a source of income and for medicinal purposes, believing in its health-giving properties. The term “honeymoon” comes from the medieval tradition of drinking honey wine for a month after marriage, as it was believed to ensure fertility - a practice taken so seriously that a bride’s father often included a month’s worth of mead in her dowry. So, what actually is mead? Essentially, it’s a honey wine – made by fermenting water with honey. As Will Grubelnik from Gosnell’s puts it, “As apples are to cider, grapes are to wine, honey is to mead”. In its purest form, it is a very simple production process, which explains why its history is quite so old.

A drink of endless variety

Types of honey (and therefore mead) vary wildly depending on the bees’ diet of nectar and pollen. Traditional meads use milder honeys like clover or orange blossom, stronger honeys like buckwheat or wildflower add bold flavours, perfect for spiced varieties. The detailed recipes and methods developed by medieval monastic communities contributed significantly to the refinement and diversification of mead over the centuries, leading to the creation of various styles, including melomels (fruit meads), metheglins (spiced meads), and cyser (apple meads). It is this potential for diversification that is driving the drink’s contemporary appeal. Its possible flavour profiles, from sweet and fruity, to earthy and spicy, alongside the fact that it can be produced either still or sparkling, appeal to a wide range of palettes. Gosnells, for instance, offers both still and sparkling meads and utilises various honeys. Their flavour options include a fruity raspberry and hibiscus, which drinks much like a fruit cider and a wonderfully unconventional ‘blueberry velvet’ option (which the bar manager aptly describes as something between a Guinness and a Müller Corner).

Generation curious

The revival also sits as part of a broader drinks industry growth towards craft beverages. Consumers are seeking unique and artisanal products crafted with a real sense of provenance, and mead fulfils all of these criteria. For a drink that wrestles so fiercely with its past, it now faces a future that demands reinvention over reverence. Mead may have once been nectar of the gods, but today it’s shaping up to be something altogether more modern.