- Emlyn Jones -

Meads significance to me

A viking drink, a drink of the celts, and that is what we are, vikings and celts, but in reality we are not vikings or celts for their time has passed. They were removed from our collective history and culture, but the soul yearns; the soul remembers. That spirit of adventure, that connection with the land and our ancestors remains within us. In this modern world we are pushed and smashed away from our past, our passions are strangled with the shiny modern trinkets and slowly we fold, we weaken, and we are assimilated into it. Then the beast within us awakens, we glimpse that wild place, our body is tested and remembers that it was made for more than consumption and our spirit stirs. Mead is one of those memories, those glimpses that awaken within us our imprisoned freedom. This is not some piece of advertising patter, this is what I truly feel. We need links to our past to remind us that we are more that the contents of our amazon wishlist. I sought mead out many years ago when I read the story of the 'Mead of poets' from the Hávamál and from there I explored mead's significance in the cultures of western Europe. This is where my search began. I needed to try mead. And try mead I have.
 
Growing up in west Wales only a few miles from Afon Mel but long before it was a meadery, I struggled to find this golden treat and my quest fell away as I was drawn into the world. My life shifted and I arrived in South Africa, a hemisphere away from my land, and further removed from any chance of mead. However, the modern world did allow me international purchasing access, and I was able to snatch samples of mead from the world over. Scandinavian mead was hard to get but by far the best I had tasted. The USA produced some good attempts but it wasn't until I came back to Wales to visit my Mam that I was made aware of the treasures close to home. My initial explorations of Afon Mel were a bottle of its medium honey mead and I realised I had found that which I had been searching for. Maybe it was because they were bees that had fed on the plants that grew where I had grown up or maybe that this was simply an amazing mead. Either way I knew this needed to be drunk more. Since that day I have, whenever I can, visited the meadery and left with many, many bottles. While I still lived in South Africa these bottles were preciously guarded and only drunk on special occasions, festivals and celebrations, where I fought to reconnect with my world from a distance. I have since returned to the north, now living in Scotland, and I have access to mead once again. The horizons and meads available to me are once again great, and like a guilty lover I admit, I have wandered away from Afon Mel a few times only to come running back when that special something, that depth of quality was lacking.