Beverage
Traditional Mead
S tier
Traditional mead is honey, water, and yeast—no fruit, no spice, no grape. The honey variety is the grape of this wine: orange blossom stays light, heather and buckwheat go dark and wild. Residual sugar can run from dry to dessert, but the ferment should still taste of honey rather than of sugar water. Strength is usually wine-like. Drink it as you would a wine of the same sweetness. In a sauce start with a drier traditional mead; a sack-sweet bottle becomes candy when reduced. This is the reference leaf for "mead" in a recipe that does not specify melomel or metheglin.
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History
The oldest meads were honey, water, and whatever yeast the air or the pot provided.
European feast meads were often this simple honey wine before spice became a luxury extra.
Polish miód pitny kept traditional honey wines as a named household drink.
Craft meaderies put single-honey traditional meads on lists beside fruit showpieces.