Leah van Deventer
Leah van Deventer is a writer, educator, judge, and consultant. She is the Academy Chair for The World’s 50 Best Bars and founder of the Best Upliftment Initiative
When we think of mead, we tend to conjure Nordic warriors swilling from horns post-raid, or perhaps Anglo-Saxons washing down roast meat at a feast. What we don’t picture — oddly — is Africans. And yet mead has African roots deeper than a baobab.
Long before Europeans co-opted it for celebrations, mead was crafted, consumed and venerated by African kings, chiefs and spiritual leaders as a marker of status.
But before we unbottle that legacy — what is mead, exactly?
At its core, mead is an alcoholic beverage made by adding water to honey and letting it ferment. Simple on paper, yes, but stylistically, mead is a category unto itself. It can be still or sparkling, sweet or dry, and infused with fruits, spices, herbs or botanicals — depending on local tradition or creative whim. This wide range means it’s sometimes thought of as beer, and sometimes wine. However, it contains neither grain nor grape.
While it’s impossible to pinpoint who invented it, the earliest archaeological evidence of mead dates back approximately 10 000 years — thanks to pottery vessels with traces of fermented honey-based beverages unearthed in present-day Ethiopia and Sudan.
That predates Europe’s first written account of mead by about 8 000 years.
Even more compelling is the living link to Africa in karri, the honey wine that the Khoe-Sān continue to make today. With genetic lineages stretching back tens of thousands of years, the Khoe-Sān are among the oldest continuous cultures on Earth — and their practice of fermenting honey, water and wild roots into a mildly alcoholic beverage may be as old as their rock art.
In parts of West, East and Southern Africa, mead traditions persist to this day.
The most famous is probably Ethiopia’s tej — a boldly flavoured honey wine spiced with gesho, a bittering agent akin to hops — served informally at tej houses and at special occasions like weddings, religious holidays and community gatherings.
South Africa’s iQhilika — a traditional Xhosa mead — holds spiritual significance and is often brewed for ancestral rites and milestones. In Cameroon, kihika is served as part of courtship and succession rituals.
While traditional African meads are still largely homemade, South Africa is seeing a steady swell of commercial meaderies bringing ancestral brews into the modern age — blending cultural lineage with contemporary craft.
Cape Town Meadery is one of the most prominent, crafting refined expressions from raw, organic honeys. Their flagship Melaurea sparkling mead is bone dry and elegant, with delicate bubbles and subtle fynbos aromatics, fermented with Champagne yeast for structure and finesse.
They’re joined by the likes of Makana Meadery in Makhanda — reviving Xhosa mead traditions in both sweet and dry styles — and Mellivora Meadery, a boutique Cape producer experimenting with regional honeys and heritage botanicals.
This quiet resurgence is a reassertion of origin — a reclamation of form and flavour long misattributed or erased.
What sets these meads apart isn’t just their lineage — as direct descendants of the original honey brews — but their breadth of interpretation, unique terroir and refined adaptation to the modern palate.
The honeys used explore the exceptional flavours of local flora, as bees forage what the landscape provides: flowering fynbos in the Cape, acacia blossoms in Limpopo, marula blooms in Mpumalanga and blue gum groves scattered across the interior.
Fermentation techniques vary — from spontaneous wild yeast to méthode traditionnelle — with some producers even pushing into fortified styles or hybrid braggots.
What emerges is a category with a serious range, and even more serious provenance. Mead began here — and once again, Africa is showing the world how it’s done.
