Kendrick and I stopped in to Casellula for some olives and cheese on Sunday night, and he tried their chili-infused mead (I took one sniff and not-so-politely declined). Mead is pretty hard to find nowadays, but such an interesting addition to a drink menu: made with honey and water (via fermentation with yeast), mead is sometimes referred to as “honey wine” and varies dramatically in terms of taste and alcohol content (it usually hovers somewhere around the alcohol content of a strong wine, but can be distilled to brandy or liqueur strength). 

Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat called mead “the ancestor of all fermented drinks,” while Claude Levi-Strauss declared it a marker of the passage “from nature to culture.” Maybe I should give it another try? Next time I’ll have one without the chili infusion, thanks.