The Right Choice Between Wine vs Mead: Getting to Know Their Distinct Quality & Tastes

Is it sometimes confusing to figure out how one type of alcoholic beverage differs from another? The same thing goes with most people's confusion between wine vs mead. When choosing between two beverages, it helps to know their distinct characteristics.

So...

Let's go into further detail and explore the difference between mead and wine. Discover the unique qualities of each drink and choose which one you prefer.

Both wine and mead have their benefits, but the better one of the two depends on your needs and preferences.

Main Differences Between Mead Vs Wine

The main differences between mead vs wine are:

• Wine fermentation uses grapes, whereas mead fermentation combines water and honey.
• An opened bottle of table wine usually lasts only a few days, whereas many meads keep longer once opened.
• Mead is often sweeter than dry table wine, so a glass can carry more calories.

Getting To Know Mead

Mead History

Many people have enjoyed drinking mead wine or honey wine since ancient times.

It's a honey-based fermented beverage that today's generation might still associate with the Vikings or King Arthur's knights at the round table.

Some cultures even call mead the nectar of the gods, saying it was heaven-sent dews accumulated by bees.

Greeks and many others at that time utilized mead in their religious ceremonies, linking it with power and immortality.

Moreover, you will not have difficulty encountering mead on several occasions in classic literature. Such classic pieces of literature include Beowulf and The Miller's Tale from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

Ancient texts such as the Rigveda, composed more than 3,000 years ago, mention honey drinks. Mead became a well-known drink across Europe, Asia, and Africa, and it was popular among the Ancient Greeks and the Celts.

Mead Production

Mead is a fermented honey beverage that may be one of the oldest alcoholic drinks. It's also well-known to many people as the "honey wine." Nevertheless, the argument continues: is it beer or wine?

As simple as it may sound, mead is mead, just as cider is cider.

Mead makers treat mead as its own category, separate from beer and wine, even though US regulators label it as a wine made from honey. A traditional mead only contains fermented water and honey.

Mead fermented with fruit is called a "melomel," and a spiced mead is called a "metheglin." These add fruitiness or mild spice to the honey flavor.

Adding malt to your mead makes it a "braggot," another of mead's sub-types. In French and Spanish, mead itself is called "hydromel," and in English the word often means a light, low-alcohol mead.

A mead maker combines honey with water to induce fermentation and make it more yeast-friendly. Adding some yeast nutrients allows it to complete healthy fermentation. As a result of adding yeast to the mixture of water and honey, it becomes an alcoholic drink.

Mead Taste Profile

The different types of honey used as the main ingredient can affect a mead's flavor profile.

Unlike grapes or grains, honey has a broader variety of flavors coming from almost any flower available. Bees collect nectar from these plants and turn it into honey in the hive.

The number of flowering plants that bees pollinate and the changing seasons is why honey can acquire versatile flavors and scents. Soil nutrients, rain, the bees' foraging, and more also contribute to how honey tastes.

In addition to the honey flavor compounds, yeast fermentation, the aging process, and production techniques are also variables. Meads sometimes have additives (herb, spice, fruit juice, etc.) that contribute to their flavors. Adding herbs to sweet mead made it more delectable.

When you think about honey without sweetness, you can appreciate the flavors in traditional mead. It should have clean, floral notes but a more potent taste like white wine.

Mead Shelf Life

Another confusion among drinkers is how long a mead could last.

There is quite a distinction in a mead's lifespan depending on its type.

Some meads are light and have the right balance allowing you to serve them at any time. It has a shorter lifespan; hence, it's best to consume it immediately once opened.

Relatively, a sweet mead can also be dry and with higher alcohol content. Both light and classic meads are good, but the latter is the most fitting choice when it comes to a long-lasting mead. A traditional mead can last you for a few months if you store it well after opening.

If a mead has that bitter-like overpowering smell or looks cloudy, it may no longer be good to drink. In addition to that nasty smell and look, you'd know if mead is no longer fit for drinking if it lacks the fullness and freshness of flavor.

Mead's Health Benefits

Historically, mead infused with herbs and spices was taken as a folk remedy.

Honey contains some antioxidants, but fermenting it into an alcoholic drink does not make mead a health drink.

Some people claim mead is healthier than wine or beer, but there is no good evidence for that. Traditional mead is naturally free of gluten; however, that depends on the additives included (a braggot, for example, contains malt). You might want to check labels first to be sure.

In essence, there are no proven health benefits to drinking mead. People have called it a healing tonic throughout history, but that is folklore, not medicine.

Even if your mead includes some flavors, an authentic one will always have this sweet-strong blend. Mead's ABV (alcohol by volume) will be around 4% to 20%, so best to ensure moderate consumption even when you enjoy drinking mead or any alcoholic beverage.

Getting To Know Wine

Wine History

France, Spain, and Italy will undoubtedly be the first to cross everyone else's minds in terms of wine and wine production.

However, the history of wine goes way back in time before the French wine even existed.

The oldest known winery, about 6,000 years old, was found in a cave in Armenia. Traces of a fermented drink of rice, honey, and fruit in China date to about 7000 BC, and traces of grape wine in Georgia date to about 6000 BC. Iran and Egypt were also early winemaking centers.

The Old World's ancestral wine regions sit around the Near East, the Mediterranean, and Europe. This is where wine production first developed.

After 1492, European settlers carried winemaking to the Americas, and it spread across South America in the 1500s. Later, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada also became well-known New World regions.

Settlers planted the European grape species, Vitis vinifera, in these new regions. In the twentieth century, winemakers began using selected, cultured yeast strains rather than relying only on wild yeast.

Corks have sealed wine bottles for centuries, and screw caps arrived in the twentieth century, although many drinkers still prefer corks.

A more recent innovation is micro-oxygenation, a technique developed in France in the early 1990s that feeds tiny amounts of oxygen into wine.

Wine Production

Making wine begins with growing and harvesting quality wine grapes.

When a winemaker turns grapes into wine, a process known as vinification, there will be numerous choices. There's this option to do sparkling wine, still table wine, aromatized wine, or fortified wine.

The vinification process starts by crushing the grapes and extracting the juice. Pre-fermentation treatment follows to eliminate stray pulps and anything that could give the wine an off-flavor.

There are several ways in which sulfur plays a part in the production of wine. In addition to serving as an antiseptic, sulfur dioxide also acts as an antioxidant. Lastly, the fermentation process comes next, where the grape juice extract turns into wine.

Wine Taste Profile

The experience of drinking wine and tasting wine is not that different from eating dinner and trying to redo a chef's recipe ingredient by ingredient.

There are many reasons why wines taste differently.

The first is due to the grape variety. Climate, soil type, and viticulture process also affect grape quality and flavor. The best way to describe a wine to someone else is through its sweetness, acidity, tannin, and body.

It is crucial to remove all distractions, especially comments from others when tasting wine, as it is too easy to be misled. Remember that every product is only as good as its ingredients.

The method of growing grapes impacts the quality of the wine. It is not only the location of the vines that determines whether they will grow well; the vine treatment on the field matters too.

Wine Shelf Life

A wine's taste and longevity vary with its behavior at different temperatures.

Keeping wine that needs aging in the right conditions is vital to maintain quality.

Microbiological decay is most prevalent in sweet-tasting and low-alcohol wines, whereas drier wines containing more alcohol and are less sweet have a longer shelf life.

Wine Health Benefits

Older studies suggested that moderate wine drinking might help the heart, but the CDC says newer research finds no health benefits of moderate drinking compared with not drinking. Even less than one drink a day can raise the risk of certain cancers.

If you drink, the CDC suggests two drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less for women. A standard drink of wine is 5 ounces at about 12% alcohol.

Taste Test: One wine to try out is one from Malbec. Read our post on a variation of this brand -- Trapiche Malbec Review.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you use active dry yeast when making mead?

Yes, you can experiment with bread yeast but it may not assure your desired outcome. You can test different types of bread yeast in multiple batches of mead to determine which will work best. Wine yeast can also be good for dry meads since it ferments moderately.

But it might help you decide if you know that yeast is an essential ingredient of mead. Therefore, choosing the right mead yeast is of paramount importance. You need to consider yeast choices and mead recipe more thoroughly, especially if you're brewing mead for the first time.

If you're interested in how to make a dry yeast starter for mead, watch this video:

Could mead be more potent than wine?

Yes, some meads can be. Sack meads, made with extra honey, can reach 14% to 18% ABV or a little more, which is higher than many table wines. Distilled honey spirits are stronger still, but they are no longer mead.

Aside from the key ingredient, another notable difference between mead and wine is their alcohol content. Table wines typically sit around 12% to 15%, while meads can have ABV ranging from about 4% to 20%, depending on fermentation.

Where can you get a good mead today?

Mead is currently experiencing a surge in demand. Many years ago, you could only probably find it in Renaissance fairs. Nowadays, you could check them out in online stores or artisanal bars.

You might want to try Oliver Winery for a wide selection of meads and wines alike if you're interested. Redstone Meadery offers exceptional tasting rooms you might want to visit as well. Let's not forget how Enlightenment Wines has an excellent reputation in mead production.

Final Thoughts

In summary, understanding the difference between mead and wine will show you how each alcoholic beverage is unique. One thing you can't miss about the difference between wine and mead is the key ingredients. It's grapes for the wine and honey for the mead.

Therefore, you end up with two alcoholic beverages similar in their bodies and alcohol content but utterly different in their flavors. So, if you're one with unwavering curiosity about mead, you can at least be sure that it's worth trying.

Just go with your instinct and trust your taste buds. Hopefully, this article will serve as your handy guide and help you choose your next alcoholic beverage with more confidence.

Sources

• About Moderate Alcohol Use, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• What Is a Standard Drink?, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism