Mead

Cave paintings of 12,000 years ago show men collecting honey from a hive of bees. It was the original sweetener, and how long it took Man to discover it could become a fermented drink we do not know. However, although thousands of years of history went into the making of mead, wine made from fermented grapes eventually supplanted it.

There are many different kinds of honey, light and dark, thin and thick, and the flavour depends a lot upon the kinds of flowers visited by the bees. In spite of the subtle differences in flavour the chemical composition of honeys remains fairly constant.