Traditional Vintage Mead

Our First Vintage Mead!

Introducing our first vintage, made with 100%, local raw London honey.

I had always dreamt of making a mead with local London honey, in fact, the dream has always been to keep bees on the roof and make mead from the honey downstairs, so whilst we’re not there yet this is a step towards it.

What’s amazing about honey is that the flavour is so different depending on what the bees have been foraging. Bees generally collect from plants and flowers within a 3-mile radius of the hive. For our main Gosnells of London, we use a Spanish Orange blossom honey – this means that the beehives are in the middle of the orange groves when the blossom is in bloom, so the bees predominantly forage on this, giving it it’s signature flavour. 

The situation with local, and especially London honey is really different – there’s such a variety of plants and flowers that the flavour of the honey (and the mead) is really different from year to year and even month to month.

It’s taken quite some time for us to be able to source enough honey for us to be able to make a mead made with 100% London honey – this year we’ve used almost half a tonne!

We decided to brew something stronger than our normal Gosnells to celebrate this amazing honey, so we’ve used our standard house yeast, along with a more robust wine yeast to help drive the fermentation to a celebratory 12%.

It’s really exciting to be able to create a drink which completely encompasses the flowers and blossom of the city. Our 2018 vintage is incredibly complex and deep, with notes of blackcurrant, sloe and a hint of spice on the finish.

Our Vintage 2018 will launch on Friday 30th November – pre-order online now and we’ll deliver on the Friday or you can pick up directly from the meadery in Peckham!

 
 
Our first (very sticky) all London honey brew day
The finished results! 
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