Metheglin: country style honey cider
Metheglin was the old English name for honey cider, a form of mead. It was the drink that newly married couples were supposed to drink for 30 days after the wedding in order to fix sweetness as the basis of their life together. (The origin of honeymoon—a moon cycle of honey drinking.) The ancient recipe for Metheglin was simple: a handful of honey in the comb, a palmful of bee bread (pollen), both immersed in water in an oak bucket, and left in a cool dark cellar. When the dark of the cellar was perfumed with the scent of the brew, it was ready for sipping.
By the 17th century a discrimination was being made between Mead and Metheglin, with the latter said to contain spices (clove, nutmeg, cinnamon). In that English treasury of formulae for food and drink, The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened (1669), spiced Metheglin is distinguished from weak watered Hydromel, and simple mead. But these distinctions quickly became clouded because one encounters mead recipes calling for Woodruff, Hyssop, lemon mint, and rose hips. Black pepper too is found in some recipes.
Until the 20th century Methlegin was a standard farmstead beverage—a signature of rural ways in America. When the famous bon vivant, politician, and cocktail enthusiast Saw Ward drank his way through America on a tour in the 1870s, he was stumped only once when asked to identify an alcoholic beverage; yes the cosmopolitan Ward could not ID Methlegin.
Now-a 150 years later-there is a Metheglin revival going on. The salubrious qualities of honey are being supplemented by herbs and medicinals, beside the old flavoring spices. This new idea is old since one etymology of the word medicine has it come from Metheglin. Want to try a new version: try Colorado Honey Wines “Romantic Traveler” or Meadow Vista “Mabon Mead.”