International demand encouraging Danes to make medieval-style mead

USA is the biggest market for the historical honey wine

It seems beer – even from the most obscure microbrewery – is too mainstream for today’s hipsters, as trendspotters home and abroad track the resurgence of the medieval tipple mead, Berlingske reports.

Huge demand
Sales of the fermented honey wine rocketed in both the US and the UK last year. Mads Petersen, who runs the Danish mead brewers Petersen & Sønner, which shipped its first batch in November last year and has since won two prizes for the product, told Berlingske they are struggling to keep up with demand.

“Demand is high – we sell everything we can produce,” he said.

“But it is still a struggle for us to explain that it’s not a Viking beer we make, but a honey wine.”

Sune Risum-Urth, the bar manager at Copenhagen’s No.2 restaurant and cocktail bar, has also begun production and confirms there is a market for mead, especially in the USA.

“I’ll be bottling my first batch next week,” he said.

“I think there’s a market, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth the time for me to produce it. In the USA, where the market is biggest, they produce a lot themselves, but the biggest Danish producers send a container or two of mead to the USA every month.”