Up to now, I’ve ignored the one blindingly obvious candidate for a Valentine’s Day bottle, namely mead, a drink that newlyweds used to be given for a month after their nuptials to promote fertility (hence the term “honeymoon”). To be honest, though, I’ve only ever found a couple of meads I actually liked, but that changed just before last Christmas, when I tasted one that Hive Mind made from the leftover honey (all 250 pots of it) submitted to the Great Taste Awards, and all profits from which go to the charity Bees Abroad, too.
Hive Mind is the kind of artisanal producer you find all over the place in the beer and cider worlds these days, but mead is still a relative rarity, honey being a rather more complicated proposition than hops or apples. Brewer Matthew Newell, however, has been keeping bees since he was 13, which gave him a significant headstart.
