Should Mead be Aged?

We get this question periodically. How long do you age your Meads before selling them? It is commonly believed, if not well understood, that wines can improve with age. A well known advertising slogan from the 1970's for one of the larger wine corporations advised us, "We will sell no wine before its time.”

Many people are not aware that most modern, commercial wines are intended to be consumed within a couple of years of hitting the retailer's shelves. The improvements in palatability when a bottle is saved beyond two years is minimal. Longer term storage of commercial wines is very rarely effective in improving the wine. There are exceptions, which usually involve high end reds made in small quantities using traditional equipment and methods. These exceptions are also typically higher alcohol content wines. A 9% Moscato Wine is never going to be a good candidate for long term cellaring.

Let's remember that Mead and (grape) Wines are not the same animal, although there are similarities. Mead in particular has a reputation for needing significant aging to be palatable. I have on my shelf a number of Mead-making books, most of which emphasize that Mead might only be barely drinkable without being aged for a minimum of one year. If you have made a batch of home-made Mead, it is possible you agree with this statement. It's not unusual for a fresh batch of home-made Mead to taste like honey flavored rocket fuel, only to eventually become delicious after a year or more in the bottle.

So why would a Mead (or Wine) need aging? In the process of fermentation, yeasts consume the sugars in the original non-alcoholic mix (called a must), and release carbon dioxide and ethanol as by-products. It is the ethanol that we are interested in, which primarily provides the psychoactive properties of alcoholic drinks and generally is tasted as sweet and somewhat fiery. Ethanol is a short-chain, simple alcohol (CH₃CH₂OH). But the process of fermentation, especially in uncontrolled and primitive circumstances, also produces a number of longer chained molecules, including more complicated alcohols and various Aldehydes and Acetyls. These longer chain molecules typically give a fire-water taste that is not as endearing to drinkers, and can also be a serious problem with creating headaches and hang-overs. If you've made home-made hooch and it tasted like fire-water, you've most likely got a cocktail full of chemicals that aren't as pleasant as more pure Ethanol.

When Wine or Mead is aged, these longer chain molecules eventually break down into simpler molecules which are more like Ethanol, and less toxic and noxious. This is why traditionally, an aged bottle will be smoother than a bottle freshly filled.

Traditionally...here's the key point. Wine and most especially Mead-making have come a long way in the last 50 years. We have learned that the reason yeast will create noxious by-products in addition to our beloved Ethanol is that the yeast are not healthy, or not happy. Any particular strain of yeast has its optimum environmental requirements to do their best work. These factors include temperature, initial sugar content, pH, and nutritional factors. A modern Meadery goes to much trouble to give the yeast their very best, cushy home to work in, and in return they generally get from the yeast a much cleaner fermentation than is possible in a home environment. Modern commercial Meaderies do not have to age their Meads because their fermentations are much more closely controlled and monitored than in ages past. As a result, our Meads are typically ready to consume as soon as they are bottled.

This is not to say that a person with a sensitive palate cannot taste the difference in freshly bottled Juniper Tree Meadery NTS, and a bottle that is two years old. Even with a highly controlled fermentation, the yeast will still throw out a smaller measure of longer chain alcohols. But the difference should be very subtle. It is not the difference between undrinkable and drinkable, but between good and better.