“‘I thank you.’ Bran wondered if he would have to eat a frog to be polite. ‘I offer you the meat and mead of Winterfell.’” -A Clash of Kings
A staple of hospitality in Westeros, mead comes in a wider variety than you might expect (and than is described in any detail in the books). All are honey-based, but that’s usually where the similarities end. Some meads are sweet and thick, like after dinner liquors; others are drier and spicier. Some meads, although still honey based, acquire their primary flavors from fermented fruits, or the casks in which they are aged. As such, you can find meads flavored with apples, pears, peaches, ginger root, whiskey casks, or rum casks, and some are flavored with more exotic fig, coffee, juniper, chili peppers, and other ingredients.
Mead can be served any time of day, on its own, or with a meal. Most meads are best served at room temperature, but some of the sweeter, lighter varieties are also nice slightly chilled.
Also amazing: mead marinade reduction for rich meats, such as boar and venison
Readers’ Suggested Meads:
- Bunratty Mead (IRE)
- Oliver Winery’s Camelot Mead (OH)
- Valley Vineyard’s Mead (OH)
- Rabbit’s Foot (CA)
- Redstone Meadery (CO)
- White Winter Mead (WI)
- Rabbit Warren Mead (CA)
- Mt. Hope Winery (PA)
- Fox Hill Meadery (NC)
- Montezuma Winery (NY)
- Magpie Farms Winery (NY)
- Starrlight Meadery (NC)
- Rohan Meadery (TX)
- Lindisfarne – technically a fortified honey-wine (UK)
- Moniak – (UK)
- Chouchenn (Britanny)
Meads we love:
- Lurgashall English Mead– simple sweet honey flavor that is full bodied and easy to enjoy
- Lurgashall Tower of London– aged in scotch barrels, the taste starts with spiced honey, has a hint of the best scotch flavors, then finishes with straight honey goodness
- Dansk Viking Blood– a rich, serious, hearty mead that scotch drinkers will like. Also the GI. Dansk Mjod, which has a lovely ginger flavor.
- Redstone– raspberry, black raspberry are nice and not overly sweet fruit meads
- Honey Garden- has a blueberry mead that was out of this world
- B. Nektar’s Wildberry- mead is what humans taste like to vampires: intoxicatingly delicious, made with syrah
- Iqhilika- a South African mead that comes in bizarre Westerosi-appropriate flavors, such as coffee and fig
- Die Hochland Imker Winter Mead– like a wonderful honey punch in the face, very sweet, awesome with the included spices
- Earle Estates- Anything they make, but especially the black raspberry. This Fingerlakes award winning meadery is a personal favorite.
- Sap House Sugar Maple Mead– made with maple syrup, this mead tastes more like a great sherry than traditional mead
Mead Recipes:
Meads in Progress or Planned at the Inn:
- Apple Pie
- Cyser, made with local apples
- Winter Squash mead
- Burnt Honey mead
Game of Brews 