Mead is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting honey and water with yeast. A glass of lightly chilled mead on a summer's evening is a splendid delight. And yet, of all the crafts of mankind, mead-making is certainly one of the oldest. It is likely that mead was made even before the wheel was invented as stone-age cave paintings depict the collection of honey from bee colonies. The drink made from honey became a staple of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Medieval and Renaissance Britain. This practical book will inspire you to take up this admirable craft. It includes chapters on honey selection, mead-making techniques, and forty-two recipes for mead, melomel (using honey mixed with fruit juice), pyment (honey mixed with grapes), hippocras (honey mixed with grapes and herbs), metheglin (spiced medicinal mead), cyser (honey mixed with apples) and other honey drinks.

In recent years there has been a rapid growth in the popularity of wines of all sorts. And although commercially produced wine has become less expensive, it is always a challenge to turn your own hand to reproducing the flavour and quality of commercial wines in your own home, using easily-obtained ingredients. Sauternes, Hocks, Moselles, Chianti, Madeiras, Champagnes and Liqueurs can all be made at home cheaply from easily available ingredients - are all possible with the help of this book. You can become a wine connoisseur on a shoestring budget! The line illustrations are all based on photographs from the Radio Times Hulton Picture Library.