Great Taste 3 Stars for Hive Mind Wye Valley Traditional Mead

The Hive Mind Mead & Brew Co has been awarded the highest three-star Great Taste award rating for its Wye Valley Traditional Mead.

The Guild of Fine Food rates three star products as “extraordinarily tasty food and drink” and only 2% of the thousands of products submitted for Great Taste judging every year achieves three stars.

Hive Mind brews meads and beers at its meadery in Caldicot using only natural ingredients and honey from its own local hives, where its beekeeping supports habitat conservation and important pollinator populations.

Hive Mind’s Traditional Mead reflects the flavours from the hills, meadows, hedgerows and woodlands of the Wye Valley through the honey that's harvested each and every season. To make the honey which goes into every bottle, the bees will have pollinated more than 1.7 million flowers and flown in excess of 70,000 miles.

The Great Taste accreditations celebrate the UK’s finest artisanal food and drink and are blind-tasted by a panel including celebrity chefs, Michelin-starred restaurateurs, food critics, buyers, retailers and writers. 

Three-star products will then go on to compete for the Great Taste’s Golden Fork Awards, given to the best products in each nation and region next October.

The judges’ comments described the Mead’ as: “Altogether beautifully crafted and thoroughly enjoyable…This is an absolute joy to imbibe and we loved it.”

Judges’ tasting notes included: “A lovely complexity to this mead - well balanced throughout with woody and toasted notes and a soft sweetness rolling into a soft lemony acidity with a long finish”; “Smooth and silken on the palate with lingering floral notes on the finish. A really delightful and delicious mead with both fragrance and floral complexity”; and “A delightful, promising nose with a heady, blossomed fragrance to this gorgeous pale yellow mead. Softly sweet and nuanced, rounded and complex and deeply floral.”

This year, to help reduce food waste and prevent honey left over after the judging process being discarded, Hive Mind will be working with the Guild of Fine Food to collect the honey and brew a new ‘Great Taste’ mead.

Hive Mind’s tasting notes describe the Mead as sweet, rich and moreish with rich floral and heather notes. Hive Mind Traditional Mead is sold in classic cork-stopped 70cl bottles in numbered batches and is 14.5% ABV.

Hive Mind sells direct to consumers online and from its wonderful Caldicot tap house. It's also available through independent delis, farm shops, bars and restaurants all over the UK through specialist distributors including Pig’s Ears, Cotswold Fayre, Hammonds of Knutsford, Craft Drinks Co and Blas ar Fwyd.

The Traditional Mead, along with the special whiskey barrel-aged version, has recently been added to the shelves of Selfridges and is used by Michelin-starred restaurants including Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck and James Sommerin’s Home, following an appearance earlier this year on a TV series with the Hairy Bikers focused on small artisan producers.

Hive Mind co-founder Kit Newell said: “We describe our Traditional Mead as a distillation of the local landscape - it’s a well-balanced flavour that showcases the seasonality and all the floral notes from our carefully selected local honey, not just its sweetness. 

"It’s a great example of how we’re working to modernise the perception of what mead can offer and how well it works as an alternative to sweet wines, spirits or ciders. It is also a fantastic after-dinner drink and pairs beautifully with tasty blue cheeses.”

“We’ve seen a huge surge in interest in mead in the US off the back of the growth in the craft beer market as people search out new and interesting flavours. And we’re delighted to be growing the profile and availability of mead in the UK through recognition by the Great Taste judges and the growing number of specialist distributors, artisan retailers and high-profile chefs supporting Hive Mind,” he pointed out.

Hive Mind has recently launched a range of specialist flavoured session-strength Sparkling Mead (4%, 330ml cans). Other Hive Mind products include Oak Whiskey Barrel-Aged Traditional Mead (20%, 500ml) and honey beers including honey pilsner, Nectar (440ml 4.5%), smoked honey porter (750ml 7.0%), Citra IPA (330ml 5.7%) and golden ale (330ml 4.5%).

https://hivemindmead.com/

Hive Mind Mead & Brew Co. has launched a new range of naturally-flavoured sparkling mead in cans

The new Hive Mind Sparkling Mead range is 4% ABV and comes in four fascinating flavours, ginger, elderflower, rhubarb and pure honey.

For the first time ever, it's going to be available in 330ml cans, sold individually or as a boxed four-pack containing one of each flavour. Two more flavours, sour cherry and honey & hops will soon also be added to the range.

And all of the company’s mead is gluten free, it's made using natural ingredients and with British honey, including honey from its own hives which are based in the Wye Valley, where its beekeeping supports local biodiversity, habitat conservation and important pollinator populations.

Showcasing their beekeeping heritage, the sparkling mead cans will carry new Hive Mind branding, based around colourful honeycomb illustrations, and highlighting the approximately 300,000 flowers visited and 50,000 miles flown by bees to make the honey for every can. 

The Sparkling Mead launched on 20 May to coincide with World Bee Day, an international day of awareness in support of these vital pollinators.

The meadery was launched in 2018 as the Wye Valley Meadery by beekeeping brothers Kit and Matt Newell, and has recently rebranded as the Hive Mind Mead & Brew Co. The brothers have long been pioneers in a resurgence in UK mead-making, taking one of the world’s oldest alcoholic drinks and creating new, more modern styles from session-strength light and refreshing sparkling meads right through to stronger, more traditional wine-style and barrel-aged meads.

Hive Mind co-founder Kit Newell said: “We’ve been creating new meads which have been at the forefront of growing interest in the product here within the UK, pioneering modern styles and changing perceptions of this versatile drink. We know that modern mead can stand head to head with beers, wines or spirits for its range of flavour profiles, as a base for cocktails or as a different option for food pairings.

“Our new session strength (4%) Sparkling Mead cans have been specially created to be light and refreshing, flavoured with natural and seasonal ingredients to make them a great summer drink for all occasions. Canning our sparkling mead makes it more portable for outdoor events, it's easy to chill and we feel convinced that it’s a more sustainable option than glass.

“As beekeepers, we understand the importance of protecting nature, supporting pollinators, creating sustainable products and working as part of our community.

And our new Hive Mind brand highlights our beekeeping heritage and shares our company’s mission to help the honeybees through the honey we make and our low impact, low intervention approach to brewing, ” he said.

The Hive Mind Sparkling Mead range will be available nationwide from independent retailers, delis and farm shops or direct from Hive Mind’s own website.

Other Hive Mind products include an award-winning wine-style Traditional Mead, Oak Whiskey Barrel-Aged Traditional Mead and honey beers including a 3 Star Great Taste Award-winning Smoked Honey Porter, a honey pilsner called ‘Nectar’ and a pollen-infused hazy pale called ‘Pollinator.’

https://hivemindmead.com/

(EDITOR: I have to admit that as a former home brewer of mead, I'm going to enjoy this new style mead.)