When I say “Mead”, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? If you’re anything like me, your first thought is something sickly sweet with an overpowering taste of honey.

Now what if I told you that you had the wrong impression? You’d probably say I was crazy.

Well, an experience at Cape Town Meadery completely changed my mind.

Champagne, Beer, and Gin?

A few weeks ago an ad came across my Facebook timeline for a mead tasting experience. With our curiosity piqued, Kim and I bought our tickets and set off on another adventure.

The experience is about 2 hours long and Ernst Thompson, the owner of Cape Town Meadery, keeps it intimate by limiting it to about 10 people at a time.

For two hours, Ernst walks you through the history and the science of mead. His background is in biotechnology and he uses every bit of his scientific knowledge to create multiple amazing types of mead. During the experience, you get to sample somewhere between 8 and 10 variations, each one distinctly different than the other.

Sure, there are the standard sweet meads, but what blew my mind were the other varieties.

We tasted a champagne mead, a Pyment (wooded chardonnay mead), a mead infused with African Bird’s Eye chilis, a braggot (beer/mead combo), a gluhwein that tasted like hot mulled apple cider, and a gin distilled from mead.

Of all the meads we tasted, the Pyment, braggot, and gluhwein were my favorites. The Pyment has a big, bold, wooded chardonnay taste, the braggot is a “summer beer” best described as halfway between a beer and a cider, and the gluhwein…well, that just takes me back to my childhood visiting the Apple Cider Mills in Michigan.

All in all, it was an incredible experience and one that completely changed my mind about mead.

Book Your Tasting

Tasting events are limited at the meadery, so booking ahead of time is essential.

If you go, bring your tastebuds and leave your expectations behind.

Click here: https://www.capetownmeadery.com/mead-tasting to book your tasting.

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