On the sixth day of St. Patrick, my true love gave to me 6 Honeyed Meads, 5 Guinness pints, 4 Harp lagers, 3 Magners Ciders, 2 shots of Paddy, and a pint of Kilkenny. . .
As our countdown to St. Paddy’s continues, it would be a horrible omission to leave out medieval Ireland’s favorite beverage – mead. In today’s world mead is rarely spoken about. Though often forgotten, mead is a wonderful, yet simple beverage made from honey, water and yeast.
The simplicity of mead is what makes it probably the world’s oldest beverage after water and milk. How old is it? Let’s put it this way – the words for mead or honey are practically the same throughout all Indo-European languages meaning that it was invented at least over 2500 years ago when some of the Indo-European people went East (Persia/India) and the others went West (Germans/Slavs/Celts/Greeks, etc.) Thus we get the Russian ‘miod”, Sanskrit “madhu” and Old Irish “mid”. Mead has indeed been around and played a major role in many cultures.
In Ireland and other Celtic cultures, mead played a major role in society. Although the linguistics clearly prove otherwise, there are some who believe that Irish monks first created mead. The ancient high kings of Ireland such as the famed Brian Boru were known to drink mead as were the Vikings whom Brain Boru defeated. In fact, the famed Viking “beserkers” were known to jack themselves up on wild rosemary* laced mead before entering battle. In today’s world this would be the equivalent of a cranked up PCP addict that the police can’t bring down and was probably quite scary in an era with axes and shields. On the softer side of mead’s history, it was used in Celtic fertility rituals and was believed to be an aphrodisiac – eventually being incorporated into nuptial ceremonies. Newlyweds would drink mead every night for an entire month after their wedding to encourage conception and thus the origin of the modern word “honeymoon”.
If you wish to celebrate Ireland this month by drinking an Irish mead, you can try to find a bottle of Bunratty Irish Mead. This is one I have never had the opportunity to try myself, having had trouble finding it in the US. Personally, I’m old school about my mead. We’ve got a bucket fermenting right now in our house and we’re going to thoroughly enjoy it when it is done. It is a very easy homebrew to make and I highly recommend trying it if you are interested in making your own great beverages.
However you like your honey, I hope that you get the chance to enjoy mead in the near future and take part in an old Irish tradition.
*not to be confused with the cultivated version we cook with today
