Mead is a Wine…Sort Of
Mead, or honeywine, is in fact a wine, but don’t let that perception shape what you think a mead will taste like. Just like beer or wine, there is a wide variety of styles. And if you ask me, which you are, mead deserves its own category.
Beer vs Wine
Each fermented beverage we have is categorized by the sugar that is being fermented, whether that’s grains, grape juice, or honey.
For beer, the fermentable sugar comes from the grains, which get extracted during the mashing process. Like in the meadmaking process, water is added to the grain sugar to reach the desired sugar concentration for fermentation.
Fun fact: beer can have more sugar in it than mead. During the heating process of mashing, some sugars are caramelized and become unfermentable, meaning the yeast cannot digest them. This residual unfermented sugar adds body to finished beer and for most styles is undetectable due to the alcohol or hops. Keep that in your back pocket next time your beer buddy says they don’t like mead because of the sweetness. Just hand them one of our bone-dry meads.
For wine, or grape wine at least, the fermentable sugar comes from the grape juice. Similarly for cider, the fermentable sugar comes from the apple juice. Cideries are also technically wine.
In mead, we have the option of using no grain or grape juice. What makes mead “mead” is the usage of honey as the primary fermentable sugar. When dilute with water, yeast are able to digest the sugars to generate alcohol.
What the Law Says
By law in the United States, if you want to make a mead with just honey and water, you must be licensed as a winery.
One challenge of being considered a wine is that meads are restricted to the wine laws, which mean higher taxation brackets than beer and restrictions on ingredients. For example, if we wanted to make a braggot, a mead made with grains, it would actually be illegal since wineries are not allowed to add grains to their products. As a meadmaker, this restriction prevents us from making a specific style of mead, but must abide by it in order to remain compliant.
The US has a long history related to alcohol regulation and often faces stringent restrictions on what can and cannot be produced. Other countries may have added flexibility on what can be produced where honey is the primary fermentable sugar.