Before heart-shaped chocolates.
Before overpriced roses.
Before anyone decided love should involve booking a table weeks in advance…
There was mead.
Golden, honeyed, and very much the drink of love, romance and a good time. In fact, mead has been playing Cupid for centuries, and it’s still doing a pretty good job.
The Original Romance Drink
Let’s start with a fun fact you can casually drop on Valentine’s Day:
The word “honeymoon” comes from mead.
In medieval Europe, mead was not just a wedding drink. It was practically part of the marriage contract. Newlyweds were often gifted enough mead to last an entire lunar month after their wedding. For that first “honey moon”, couples were encouraged to drink mead daily to bring sweetness, fertility and good fortune to their new life together.
Honey was believed to promote harmony and abundance, while mead, smooth, warming and easier to drink than most fermented beverages of the time, (as well as being a natural aphrodisiac), was thought to lift spirits and help couples bond.
Families took this ritual seriously. In some traditions, the quality of the mead was considered a reflection of the care and hope invested in the marriage. And if a baby was conceived during this month, then it was custom to tip the mead maker 😏...
Honey, Mead & a Little Bit of Magic
Mead’s love story goes back even further than medieval weddings.
Across ancient cultures, honey symbolised abundance, pleasure and life itself. When fermented into mead, it became a drink for celebrations, rituals and moments that mattered. The Norse even believed mead was the drink of gods, associated with passion, poetry and inspiration.
Which explains a lot, really.
If you needed courage, charm or just a bit of liquid confidence, mead was the answer.
Why Mead Still Makes Sense on Valentine’s Day
Fast forward to now and Valentine’s Day can feel… predictable.
Same drinks. Same gifts. Mead is different.
It’s the kind of drink you open when you want the moment to feel a bit special, whether that’s a romantic dinner, a night in with someone you love, or a solo evening where you’re very much treating yourself. (Which absolutely counts, by the way.)
Mead (proper mead) takes a long time to make, and it represents a huge amount of work from the bees too. To make one teaspoon of honey, bees will fly around 750 - 800 miles, and there are around 70 teaspoons of honey that go into making one bottle of our Traditional Mead! A bottle of mead represents time and hard work, something important for any relationship!
Love, Bottled (and canned) by Hive Mind Mead
At Hive Mind Mead, we’re big fans of old traditions, especially the good ones. We make modern mead inspired by centuries of history, but designed for how people actually drink today.
Our mead is made to be shared, talked about, and enjoyed slowly. It's for dates, celebrations, and those “just because” moments that turn into memories.
Basically: the kind of drink you open when love’s involved. Whatever that looks like to you.
This Valentine’s Day, Go Back to the Roots
So if you’re looking to do Valentine’s Day a little differently this year, take a leaf out of history’s book.
Skip the predictable bubbles and choose something with a story.
Explore our mead and find the perfect bottle for Valentine’s Day.
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