'Game of Thrones stuff': South Australia vineyard Maxwell Wines harnesses ancient method to produce drops worthy of a Viking raider

From skynews.com.au

An ancient beverage guzzled by the Vikings more than 1,000 years ago has been brought to life in a variety of flavours by a humble South Australian McLaren Vale winemaker 

Mark Maxwell thanks drunken Vikings for setting his family winery in South Australia on the road to prosperity.

The Vikings couldn’t get enough of their “nectar of the gods”, the honey wine they quaffed before heading into battle.

It wasn’t wine at all, of course, but the alcoholic fermented honey drink known as mead.

Intrigued by the stories he read about the Viking's love of mead, Mark’s father Ken Maxwell, a McLaren Vale farmer, began experimenting with different honeys and different yeasts to produce his own.

He sold his first bottle in 1966. The profits helped underpin the Maxwells' move into wine grape production.

Mark Maxwell expanded the business in 1987 buying vineyards and building a winery, cellar door and an award-winning restaurant in cream-coloured sandstone blocks.

He designed it with large windows to capture the views.

                                                                                McLaren Vale vintner Mark Maxwell. Picture: Supplied

“Making and selling natural mead in four varieties is still an integral part of our business,” Mr Maxwell, 73, said.

“Having goblets of mead is Game of Thrones stuff. No wonder the Vikings liked it.”

He makes the traditional honey mead with golden hues and with sweet floral beeswax and nutty and marmalade characters.

He added to his mead repertoire by creating a mulled mead with cinnamon and cloves.

“We then evolved that one into another mead where we added brandy and more spices and put it into oak barrels to make a liqueur mead with 20 per cent alcohol,” Mr Maxwell said.

“And we have just released a fourth mead containing ginger from Buderim in Queensland. We fermented that with honey to make a sparking mead in a can.

"It’s an easy summer drink with five per cent alcohol.”

                                                                                                                        Sparkling mead

Maxwell Wines benefit from a cooling maritime influence with some vineyards just 15km from the sea.

Maxwell Lime Cave Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 has aromas of red currant and cassis with flashes of “cigar box” and herbal aromatics.

There is more cassis on the palate enlivened with cedar and spice.

The fruit was harvested from a vineyard that sits atop limestone cave dug in 1916 to grow mushrooms.

Maxwell Four Roads Grenache has spicy raspberry and floral aromas with hints of pomegranate.

It has vibrant red fruit flavours with raspberry and cherry and savoury undertones.

There are rich blackberry and dark cherry fruit flavours in Maxwell Silver Hammer Shiraz 2023, an attractive and complex wine with a gentle natural acidity.

Maxwell Wines offers a decent set of whites. I especially enjoyed tasting the Maxwell Estate Fiano 2025 a creamy, textural wine with waxy apple flavours with hints of honey and pears

Travellers' tips

Maxwell Winery at 19 Olivers Rd, McLaren Vale, is 39km south of Adelaide.

Under the guidance of chef Fabian Lehmann, Maxwell Restaurant was last year named South Australian restaurant of the year.

He offers a tasting menu with up to 14 courses including oysters and caviar, chicken, squid, marron, wagyu beef and venison.

                                                                     Award-winning chef Fabian Lehmann. Picture: Supplied

There is a less formal tapas-style snacks menu in the winery tasting room.

The winery also offers a 30-minute helicopter tour of McLaren Vale across the vineyards with spectacular views of the cliffs, the ocean and the white sandy beaches.

The deal includes lunch.

https://www.skynews.com.au/lifestyle/travel/game-of-thrones-stuff-south-australia-vineyard-maxwell-wines-harnesses-ancient-method-to-produce-drops-worthy-of-a-viking-raider/news-story/00255f7cf138160744718031818b7813?amp&nk=ad3e7d747ce0a1015da4ab79fe8663b7-1785053155

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

From thedrinksbusiness.com 

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

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.

                                                                                                            iStock

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. 

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2025/04/honey-wake-up-mead-abuzz-with-a-new-lease-of-life/

Prairie Rose Meadery Celebrates 10 Years in Business

From kvrr.com

The honey wine emporium is the only such business in North Dakota

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) – As good a reason as any to raise your tankard this weekend – Prairie Rose Meadery is celebrating 10 years in business.

The state’s only purveyors of honey wine, Prairie Rose says they’ve been amazed at the growth they’ve witnessed over the past decade.

They celebrated their anniversary with a taco bar, trivia, and discounted mead for anyone who showed up in Renaissance-era garb.

Management says that the relationships they’ve formed with the community have been the most rewarding.

“It’s fun to see when people have their first sip of mead, if they’ve never had it before,” explained Susan Ruud, owner of Prairie Rose.

“It’s like, ‘Ooh, that’s good! It’s different than what I thought it would be.'”

“We really enjoy the whole process of getting to know people,” added Ruud.

https://www.kvrr.com/2025/05/31/prairie-rose-meadery-celebrates-10-years-in-business/

Honey wine is causing a buzz - here's what to drink on fine summer evenings

From standard.co.uk

We explore the diverse and exciting world of honey wines, from traditional meaderies to innovative modern brews 

Honey wine is an old drink. It’s arguably as old as they come, depending on which agricultural historians you engage five glasses deep.

This quintessential, foundational fermented beverage is far more than a novelty drink purchased at Christmas markets and Renaissance fairs; it’s a multi-cultural megalith, at once deeply simple in design and deeply complex in flavours, scents and the sheer science that goes into making something mead-like.

The Mead Cinematic Universe is a broad one, and a subject of great investment and import for artisanal makers of all sizes. There’s a mead for everything, from lower-alcohol hydromels to fortified sack meads to fruity-flavoured melomels to so many more besides. All, though, are derived from a simple, singular event: the fermentation of honey.

Amazing that such a singular event can conceive such a wide variety of smells and flavours – honey wine is just as complex a beverage as any grape-borne wine. There are variables galore, even just in the basic ingredients of honey, water and yeast – for instance, the flowers visited by a given beehive greatly impact the resulting flavour profile of the honey, just as evergreen variables like fermentation time and sugar content inform the character of the resulting brew.

It is this that makes mead such a vibrant scene, typified by smaller makers with hyper-local sources and unavoidably unique approaches to process and tradition.

Growing awareness, changing tastes and a general widening interest in more complex tasting notes have led honey wine to enjoy a strong, steady revival; Steven Sturgeon, of Lyme Bay Winery, has an a tangible feel for honey wine’s growing popularity from an industry perspective.

“Mead, or honey wine, is not really as much of a niche as many buyers and drinkers assume. Global mead sales were almost $600m in 2024 – and projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11 per cent by 2032, which is more than many other BWS (Beer, Wine and Spirits) products. [It] satisfies the growing demand for new and exciting fruit, floral and savoury flavours. We see its popularity driven by the shift from stronger alcohol beverages to wines and lower ABV alternatives.”

From groundbreakers to traditionalists to meaderies finding new ground amongst wine drinkers, there’s a tipple for everyone – and, barring one or two, all are mead at its most truthful: a beverage made from honey, water, yeast and little else.

Best honey wines to buy at a glance

• Best overall: Hive Mind Hiraeth Heather Mead - £30, Hive Mind Mead and Brew Co
• Best for a full-bodied late-summer sipper: Stone Circle Mead Co. Elderflower - £19.95, Stone Circle Mead Co.
• Best for your next cheese board: Loxwood Meadworks Festival - £20.98, Master of Malt
• Best for adding mead flavours to cocktails: Chalice Mead Woodland Hawthorn - £24.95, Amazon
• Best for a quaffable afternoon glass: Gosnells of London Mead - £12.50, Gosnells of London
• Best for barrel-aged brilliance: Hive Mind Oak Whisky Barrel-Aged Mead - £30.99, Selfridges
• Best for bochet-borne indulgence: Gosnells Banana Bochet - £25, Gosnells of London
• Best for a big, buttery white-wine alternative: Loxwood Meadworks Sussex Sunset - £22, Loxwood Meadworks
• Best for effervescent hydromel-ic haze: Gosnell’s Hazy Nectar - £32.50 (12 cans), Gosnells of London
• Best for festive flaves incomparable: Stone Circle Mead Co. Spiced Orange - £19.95, Stone Circle Mead Co.
• Best for a sweet-tooth glass of fruited pyment: Cornish Mead Co. Blackberry Mead - £16.50, Cornish Mead Co.
• 
  

• Hive Mind Hiraeth Heather Mead

  

  Hive Mind

  Best: overall

  Hive Mind’s meads are the perfect tessellation of the traditional and contemporary, and all with sustainably-sourced Welsh honey at their core. This is the Hiraeth, a heather mead that brings the deepest floral notes of the Wye Valley to your glass.

  As someone who is sensitive to sweetness in even drier meads, the Hiraeth is a welcome serve. And as someone who did a lot of growing-up in tents knocked up around Wales’ various national parks, the name Hiraeth – which, ham-fistedly translated from Welsh, describes a bittersweet, loving homesickness for a time or place you can’t retread – is a hugely evocative one, particularly when it comes to the flavour profiles locked into this powerful glass.

  The nose is quite sweet, with some familiar honey richness encapsulating lilts of flowerbud and freshly crumpled leaf. As the glass warms, the vegetal notes take a bolder stance, bringing some savouriness to your nostrils. This is an entirely different mead by mouth, though.

  The profile of the heather honey is enough to signify sweetness without dealing it in spades; the scaffolding of this mead is the almost-brackish body, pulling damp, peppery shrub, mineral-rich soil and barely-saline valley fog into something more like a sense memory than a tasting note.

  Some may find this a challenging sip, but I find it a vitally comforting one.

  Buy now£30,Hive Mind

  Stone Circle Mead Co. Elderflower

  

  Stone Circle

  Best for: a full-bodied late-summer sipper

  Stone Circle Mead Co. may be a Wiltshire meadery, but it’s Welsh at heart – with Welsh mead-making principles and flavours behind each bottle. So true is Stone Circle to this practice that it supplies mead to the Senedd! Stone Circle has a few flavours to its name, but here I have the Elderflower edition.

  Unsurprisingly, there’s a great deal of elderflower on the nose, though backed by a powerful acidity reminiscent of a robust coastal white wine. There’s some real tartness and a distinguished mineral body. As the glass slowly comes up to temperature, a yeasty sourness develops, not dissimilar to the deep horse blanket of a wild-fermented ale (for instance, a lightly bottle-aged Orval).

  This mead has an astonishing presence on the tongue; the extremely light effervescence, coupled with a first-impression spike of honey body, creates the impression of it melting in your mouth. It begins and ends with encouraging, sophisticated sweetness, bookending a bright, tart stretch of floral caramel that simply must be experienced. The elderflower never cloys, demands or overwhelms – it’s tastefully there, lingering in the nose, on the palate and in your empty glass. With time, that same horse blanket brings extra oomph to the glass too.

  Stone Circle’s Elderflower mead is a late summer-evening must-have, in no uncertain terms.

  Buy now£19.95,Stone Circle Mead Co.

  Loxwood Meadworks Festival

  

  Loxwood Meadworks

  Best for: your next cheese board

  Loxwood Meadworks is a contemporary producer of honey wines in West Sussex, born from humble beginnings selling small-batch mead at the Loxwood Joust – and of a shrewd recognition that there was space for something else in British mead.

  That ‘something else’ is here in the Festival, Loxwood Meadworks’ signature bottle. Named for the very Joust at which the Meadworks was conceived, you could call this their manifesto – a light, lilting glass with a trapdoor, designed to interrogate the palates of those otherwise wedded to wine. The nose is elderflower and gooseberry, reminiscent of a bright, tart white if not for the lick of local honey holding it all in place.

  The palate is acidic first and last, a refreshing brightness and zing carrying pome-fruit and even quince; briefly, some satiating honey sweetness blooms on the tongue, before a long, semi-dry finish tightens everything back up again.

  Despite the ‘grab’, it’s exceedingly light – and would lend itself extremely well to a subtle, sharp white cheese (and maybe some pickled chillies on the side).

  Buy now£20.98,Master of Malt

  Chalice Mead Woodland Hawthorn

  

  Chalice Mead

  Best for: adding mead flavours to cocktails

  Chalice Mead is a Cheltenham-borne brand with an exciting range of forward-thinking honey wines – amongst which you’ll find this beautifully balanced bottle of Woodland Hawthorn.

  On the nose, there are incredibly dense notes of forest foraging – as if the experience itself, of picking berries from a wild hedgerow, could be cooked down into a rich jam. There’s a sophisticated sweetness in it, with a developed foundation that suggests a fortified wine of far higher percentage.

  The Woodland Hawthorn is even more delightful to taste, with clear honey richness that spreads across the palate with news of juicy currants and savoury bark and root. It’s easier to drink than its flavours suggest, and much lighter on the liver too.

  It’s phenomenal on its own, but I recommend it in your posh-cocktail experiments (particularly as a substitute for sweet vermouth).

  Buy now£24.95,Amazon

  Gosnells of London Mead

  

  Gosnells of London

  Best for: a quaffable afternoon glass

  Gosnells of London is a boundary-pushing mead-maker, using 11 years of honey-brewing experience to create sweet and sometimes-sparkling bevs. Here’s their bona fide, no-frills, flagship bottle, Gosnells of London Mead – brewed using orange blossom honey, and to 5.5 per cent for especially easy drinking.

  Cracking the bottle open reveals some tasteful bottle-conditioning, by way of a light and pleasant effervescence. On the nose, there’s some surprising depth – hints of burnt caramel, apple pie and banana, topped by the tiniest bit of rum-punch rubberiness. As it warms in the glass, a little orange oil even reveals itself.

  On the palate, though, it’s a supremely light delight. Bright, sweet and in possession of some pome-fruit juiciness, this bottle is an exceedingly drinkable little joy – backed with some thick, hairy honey tang.

  The Gosnells of London Mead is a stunningly accessible pour, ideally enjoyed on a sunny afternoon.

  Buy now£12.50,Gosnells of London

  Hive Mind Oak Whisky Barrel-Aged Mead

  

  Hive Mind

  Best for: barrel-aged brilliance

  From a Wye Valley mead-making operation comes Hive Mind – a meadery which demonstrably puts a great deal of truck in doing things properly, from the keeping of its own bees to the production of this stand-out mead.

  The Oak Whisky Barrel-Aged mead takes Hive Mind’s flagship Traditional Mead (itself a delicious sip, believe me) and matures it in oak ex-whisky casks to great effect. The traditional mead is, by itself, an extremely balanced affair; the time it spends resting on whisky-infused oak only serves to develop things further, imbuing the nose with an addictive, sweetened woody backbone.

  The palate is refined too, with a slightly acidic first impression that dries out into vanilla, cinder toffee, and charred kindling. The further you get into your glass, the more you are rewarded – first with subtle honey deepness, then with expressions of citrus peel, and on and on.

  This is a beautiful barrel-aged beverage, let alone mead; don’t miss it.

  Buy now£30.99,Selfridges

  Gosnells Banana Bochet

  

  Gosnells

  Best for: bochet-borne indulgence

  Another from Gosnells of London, and this time in the form of a highly indulgent, festive bottle of Banana Bochet.

  Bochet is a subtype of mead wherein the honey is caramelised before fermentation, leading to a deepening of colour and flavour. This particular bochet benefits from some truly luxurious treatment: it’s oak barrel-aged in ex-Bourbon casks and on fresh bananas too. The result is a brilliant banoffee-like beverage with layers upon layers to unravel.

  On the nose, there’s banana in spades – real banana, too, not the good-but-different banana notes you might detect in rums and some meads. Between the caramelised honey and oak ageing, this well and truly smells like a banoffee pie (albeit a boozy one), right down to the pastry.

  On the palate, the flavours are much more complex, and rewardingly so. The first impression is pannacotta, butterscotch, crème brulee; tongue-tickling hints of stewed mincemeat (the sweet kind, mind). The banana is a floating presence in the middle, before rich, woody sweetness takes over. The finish carries almost-burnt sugar tightness, and the warmth of the ex-Bourbon oak and a lilt of honey-funk.

  This is a beautifully balanced drink with some seductive flavour to it. It lends itself to colder nights and apres-desserts, but feels like it’s there for you to revisit in the early hours for a sneaky midnight glass. Bewitching.

  Buy now£25,Gosnells of London

  Loxwood Meadworks Sussex Sunset

  

  Loxwood Meadworks

  Best for: a big, buttery white-wine alternative

  Sussex Sunset is a dry honey wine, and Loxwood’s first foot into oak fermentation; New French Oak brings colour and body to a dry, 11 per cent honey wine that leans ‘white Burgundy’ in flavour and texture.

  On the nose, there’s butter and almonds – even a little marzipan, thanks to the sweetness shoring everything up. With time, a slight sourdough breadiness appears, tantalisingly hinting at flavours to come. Indeed, this is a dry sip, with immediate mouth-puckering gooseberry and grapefruit (as if marmaladed, and spread on a slice of fresh-baked sourdough). Honey follows shortly, and is immediately followed by a vibrant, verdant hit of young wood. The body gets butterier, and the finish is deliciously slow, oily, smooth; crème brulee.

  This is again surprisingly light for its tasting notes, but nonetheless a cut-through glass of honey wine. I’d pair it with something spicy, fishy and with coconut milk.

  Buy now£22,Loxwood Meadworks

  Gosnells Hazy Nectar

  

  Gosnells of London

  Best for: effervescent hydromel-ic haze

  Now for something a little removed from conventional understandings of honey wine – via this, Gosnells of London’s forward-thinking, draught-friendly, mead-esque alternative to other beverages you’d usually find in pint form. This is Gosnells Hazy Nectar, a 4 per cent fizzy drink that positions itself as a honey-brewed cider alternative, and absolutely walks the walk.

  It’s an extremely light drink, with a pear-juice-y pale haze to the eye and sweetened-apple notes to the nose. It’s similarly light on the palate, eschewing straight-up sweetness in favour of pear-skin and apple-flesh. There’s a tiny bit of honey richness to be found at the back of the palate, which gives the whole drink a taste framework worthy of the word ‘nectar’.

  It’s not expressly mead-y, but it is a refreshing fizzybev well worth a bank holiday look-in.

  Buy now£32.50,Gosnells of London

  Stone Circle Mead Co. Spiced Orange

  

  Stone Circle Mead Co.

  Best for: festive flaves incomparable

  Another from the impressive Stone Circle, this is their Spiced Orange mead – which sees a small amount of orange juice added before the ferment alongside some classic festive spices. The result is a hugely festive scene that blooms on the nose – clove-forward, with a little cinnamon heat and some incidental cocoa-richness. The orange is understated but broad, supple; it glues the more volatile spice notes together in a sweet, spiced and very adult chocolate orange.

  On the palate, this is a supremely luxurious honey wine. There’s a lush velvet about it, an ever-rolling red carpet of nourishing pan-mulling spice notes culminating in some refreshing ginger-y fire. The orange, again, is a subtle but powerful presence, bringing life to those multifarious woody notes.

  It’s a maximalist festive sipper, but it’s one that you’ll undoubtedly want to come back to.

  Buy now£19.95,Stone Circle Mead Co.

  Cornish Mead Co. Blackberry Mead

  

  Cornish Mead Co.

  Best for: a sweet-tooth glass of fruited pyment

  Cornish Mead Co.’s Blackberry Mead is technically a pyment, owing to the grape wine base that provides much of the initial fermentational body. That fruity base is further complemented with rich blackberry, and sweetened with more honey. I was trying to avoid such mead-siblings for this guide, but Cornish Mead Co’s a compelling try – and a family operation that has been doing it this way since the Sixties.

  This is one of the stronger bottles on my list, coming in at 17 per cent. It’s also one of the sweetest, thanks to that heavy lick of blackberry and some heavy backsweetening. It’s surprisingly thin for its sweetness, and much easier to quaff than it has any right to be.

  Drink it as a dessert wine, or stick it at the bottom of your next Bellini.

  Buy now£16.50,Cornish Mead Co.

  Verdict

  I was blown away by Hive Mind’s Hiraeth Heather Mead. The flavours in this bottle are confounding. It may not be the sweet honey booze some would hope (particularly if they’re new to honey wine), but it won my taste buds over with its complex taste equivalent of environmental storytelling.

  Another fun bottle was Stone Circle’s Elderflower Mead, which brought clever fermentational flavour and body to a class of beverage that usually suffers from over-floweriness.

• https://www.standard.co.uk/shopping/esbest/food-drink/wine-spirits/best-honey-wines-b1226749.html