The move is part of the ongoing drive to modernise the image of mead while being careful not to alienate traditionalists, including sword ‘n’ sorcery lovers and historical re-enactors. You may glimpse some of our wildlife – we have a resident family of green woodpeckers and buzzards are frequently seen. AnotherWye Valley Meadery innovation is set to launch in November:Traditional Mead aged in whiskey barrels. They are hoping the hives combined with their fermenters at their new site is the golden ticket to restoring a love for a traditional drink but with a modern twist. The burgeoning Caldicot business, which launched in 2018, has its origins in Matt’s teenage desire to become a beekeeper.

He’s never made mead, so we’ve introduced him to that, and he’s introduced us to some beer-making, which we’re now doing too. The Caldicot site is also home to some of the meadery’s 120 beehives, a number increasing every year as demand for honey grows. In ye olden days, many enjoyed watching a jousting tournament with mead, and now we can recreate those times with the Lyme Bay Winery's Tournament Mead, flavoured with ginger! In Wales mead – which in its most original form is honey, water, and yeast – dates back to at least as early the year 550, written in the bard Taliesin as Kanu y Med – Song of Mead. At around the time of the first lockdown, they moved again, into their current site in Caldicot, a much larger unit that has space for a small taproom.It is said that the Viking Gods created a man who was so wise he had the ability to answer any question. The honey is used to make this wonderful Traditional Mead – with a volume of over 50% honey per bottle, or could you say 50% HBV - Honey By Volume? Possibly the most well-known of all the references to mead (and therefore stereotyping of mead) is its prominence in Norse folklore.

Kit, meanwhile, did a marketing and design course before working for a UK tech company in product development and design.We feel that the world’s oldest alcohol needed some refreshment so we created our light sparkling version using modern beer brewing techniques. Parva Farm Vineyard is situated on a south facing slope in the Wye Valley, above the village of Tintern and its historic Abbey. Wet honey will start to ferment and would usually go to waste, but we are happy to use it in our meads as we are going to ferment it anyway. The brothers hoped their sparkling ‘session mead’ would bring beer and cider drinkers into their world.

Mead, one of the oldest alcoholic drinks in history, has seen quite the resurgence recently (find out more about that over on our blog)! It was largely down to the increased availability of sugar, which was being imported to the UK by the shipload from the West Indies. Matt has been a hobby bee-keeper for over 15 years and in 2018 left the comfort of full time employment to give commercial bee-keeping a go, upscaling his hive collection to over 150 and producing excellent quality honey from the apiarys all along the Wye Valley.Admire the wonderful views from the top of the vineyard and perhaps bring a picnic and relax in a quiet place to enjoy it. As well as delicious beer-infused-dough pizza made in house by a pizza connoisseur (Kit) using our Welsh mead.

The local area has limited options when it comes to employment and local amenities so we want to grow Monmouthshire’s reputation for quality food and drink while doing our bit for the bees and highlighting the importance of honey as a product with many applications.Full bodied and deeply warming, we feel this is an archetypal, abbey-style mead, made with care and precision. In the last month alone they’ve been filming with Alan Titchmarsh, the Hairy Bikers for the Farmers’ Country Showdown, and they have also appeared on Countryfile. It takes six summer berries, with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, cherries and blueberries, fermented with Spanish honey. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused. The finished product is a deliciously sweet nectar that can be enjoyed as is, as it has been for centuries!