Possibly the most ancient alcoholic drink, the defining characteristic of mead is that the majority of the beverage's fermentable sugar is derived from honey.

[12] Mead was produced in ancient times throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia,[13][14][15][16] and has played an important role in the mythology of some peoples, which sometimes ascribed Magical or supernatural powers to it.

Mead is a drink widely considered to have been discovered likely among the first humans in Africa 20,000–40,000 years ago [17] [18] [19][better source needed] prior to the advent of both agriculture and ceramic pottery in the Neolithic,[20] due to the prevalence of naturally occurring fermentation and the distribution of eusocial honey-producing insects worldwide;[21] as a result, it is hard to pinpoint the exact historical origin of mead given the possibility of multiple discovery or potential knowledge transfer between early humans prior to recorded history.

[22][23][24] With the eventual rise of ceramic pottery and increasing use of fermentation in food processing to preserve surplus agricultural crops,[25] evidence of mead begins to show up in the archaeological record more clearly, with pottery vessels from northern China dating from at least 7000 BCE discovered containing chemical signatures consistent with the presence of honey, rice, and organic compounds associated with fermentation.

[26][27][28] The earliest surviving written record of mead is possibly the soma mentioned in the hymns of the Rigveda,[29] one of the sacred books of the historical Vedic religion and (later) Hinduism dated around 1700–1100 BCE.

[43][44] There is a poem attributed to the Welsh bard Taliesin, who lived around 550 CE, called the Kanu y med or "Song of Mead" (Cân y medd).

[51] Its cognates include Old Norse mjǫðr, Proto-Slavic medъ, Middle Dutch mede, and Old High German metu, Sanskrit madhu and the ancient Irish queen Medb, among others.

[54][55] With many different styles of mead, various processes are employed, although most producers use techniques recognizable from wine-making, including racking into another container for a secondary fermentation.

Racking is done for two reasons: it lets the mead sit away from the remains of the yeast cells (lees) that have died during the fermentation process and have time to clear.

[57][58] Length of primary and secondary fermentation can vary considerably due to numerous factors, such as floral origin of the honey and its natural sugar and microorganism contents, must water percentage, pH, additives used, and strain of yeast, among others.

[58] Mead can have a wide range of flavors depending on the source of the honey, additives (also known as "adjuncts" or "gruit") including fruit and spices, the yeast employed during fermentation, and the aging procedure.

[61][62] A mead that contains fruit (such as raspberry, blackberry or strawberry) is called a melomel,[63] which was also used as a means of food preservation, keeping summer produce for the winter.

Historically, meads were fermented with wild yeasts and bacteria (as noted in the recipe quoted above) residing on the skins of the fruit or within the honey itself.

[citation needed] In Finland, a sweet mead called sima is connected with the Finnish vappu festival (although in modern practice, brown sugar is often used in place of honey [66]).

During secondary fermentation, added-raisins augment the amount of sugar available to the yeast and indicate readiness for consumption, rising to the top of the bottle when sufficiently depleted.

An Ethiopian mead variant tej (ጠጅ, [ˈtʼədʒ]) is usually home-made and flavored with the powdered leaves and bark of gesho, a hop-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn.