Burlap shirts, strong men drinking from horns, medieval fairs with papier-mâché decorations… Perhaps reading mead conjures up images like the previous ones, but behind the oldest fermented alcoholic beverage we know there is a lot of history.
Some cave paintings found in Barranco Gómez (Castellote, Teruel) and the Cuevas de la Araña (Bicorp, Valencia) illustrate that at least 8,000 years ago, the inhabitants of the Iberian east collected honey, stunning the hives with smoke and climbing the trees from which they hung; risk sport. The remains of mead found attached to jars at the archaeological site of Jiahu, in the province of Henan, eastern China, are even older, and we know that this drink was also consumed by cultures as dispersed in time and space as those They inhabited Mesopotamia, pre-Columbian America and much of sub-Saharan Africa. And, yes, Romans, Greeks and brave Vikings were consumers of this mixture of water and honey that, most likely, fermented spontaneously when our caveman ancestors began to collect honey.
How this drink, little and poorly known, is experiencing a boom in many gastronomic restaurants throughout Spain is a very different matter, which is related to the search for new proposals in sommelier and with the attentive look at proximity and sustainability of many chefs. and chefs, who rely on mead not only as a drink, but also as another ingredient in their dishes.
The brothers Carlos and Ignacio Echapresto, room manager and sommelier and chef, respectively, of the Venta Moncalvillo restaurant (two Michelin stars) in Daroca de Rioja, are one of the pioneers. “I always wanted to make wines, but being in Rioja I was going to be one more. It happens that in 2017, Sergio Sáenz, a great winemaker, gave me a taste of the meads he was fermenting and I saw that this type of drink has many possibilities of harmonizing with the type of cuisine we make, which is very based on vegetables,” explains Carlos Echapresto. .
A little later, during a trip to Poland, Carlos tried meads with 15 years of aging and, at the same time, Ismael Echapresto, Carlos’s son, made his first steps as a beekeeper and father and son began to make their drinks comprehensively, from the hive to the cup. Nowadays, the Echaprestos make eight different meads and one of the brands of the house is that they practice the transhumance of hives: in October they provide them with a mild winter, taking them down to Quel, in the Rioja Baja, where they will be until the month of May. , at which time he will return to Daroca, in the Rioja Alta.
For two of his meads, Carlos Echapresto uses low mountain honey, rosemary and thyme, very floral. One is reminiscent of a Fino from Montilla, the second, semi-sweet, of a sake. Four other meads are made with high mountain honey, heather and calluna, they are more tannic and mineral and are reminiscent of a range of drinks that goes from Oloroso to Islay whiskey, passing through ratafia. Lastly, Echapresto Meadery (mead, in English, means mead) produces two macerated references, one is presented as a vermouth and the other follows the Jerez aging method of criaderas and soleras. All Carlos Echapresto meads ferment with wild yeasts, present in the honey, and mature for at least 12 months in the bottle.
Another mead veteran is Alberto Ferruz, chef at the Bonamb restaurant (1 Michelin star), in Xàbia, Alicante. “We have been making mead for 10 years, my partner, Pablo, is a beekeeper and collects organic honey from Montgó. We use it as a welcome drink on our Ancestral table, both cold in summer and hot in winter, and when we start with this we use a cucumber and pine cone mead in a bonito dish, like a broth,” says Ferruz. .
A little further north, in Valencia, María José Martínez, from the Lienzo restaurant (1 Michelin star) also makes her own mead. “At Lienzo we make everything from scratch and I work with honey defending beekeeping, especially urban beekeeping in Valencia. With it we make vinegar, crispy pollen and also mead,” declares the cook, and continues: “I use raw rosemary, thyme and orange blossom honeys, which ferment spontaneously, and we infuse them with waste, such as the skins and hearts of pear that we use in a dessert. In summer, for example, we have used tomato skins that provide a lot umami”. Taking advantage of these losses is a way to minimize food waste.
Martínez uses mead in desserts and pre-desserts, such as in cotton candy that he makes disappear before the diner’s eyes, diluted by the liquid.
For Carlos Echapresto, National Gastronomy Award for the best Sommelier in Spain in 2016, the secret of mead is its great versatility in pairings. “Mead, dry, sweet or semi-sweet, fits very well with dishes that are difficult to harmonize with wines, for example with many vegetables, which tend to be bitter, but also with acidic dishes, such as pickles, or cuisines such as nikkei or the Japanese. Of course, they work very well with cheeses and all types of desserts,” says the Venta Moncalvillo sommelier.
In 2021, a restaurant as closely linked to wine as Ambivium used two Moncalvillo Meadery meads to accompany a dish, Hive Spirit, which marked the beginning of the sweet part of their tasting menu. Today the Echapresto meads are present on the menus of restaurants as diverse as Mejorar, Azurmendi, Quique Dacosta, Ricard Camarena, Cobo Estratos or Kabuki.
#Mead #prehistoric #drink #gourmet #libation