Mead vs Wine: What Is the Difference?

Mead vs wine comes down to the sugar that the yeast ferments. Mead is made from honey, water and yeast; wine is made from grapes, or from other fruit for fruit wines. Both are fermented the same way, can be dry or sweet, and land in a similar range of alcohol, which is why mead is often called honey wine. The differences are in flavor, in how each ferments, and in how long it takes before the glass is worth drinking.

Below we compare mead and wine side by side, then look at taste, alcohol content, the "mead vs honey wine" question, and what changes when you make each at home. If you already know which one you want to make, jump to our guides on how to make mead and how to make wine at home.

Mead vs Wine at a Glance

The strength figures come from the Beer Judge Certification Program's mead guidelines and from federal standard of identity 27 CFR 4.21, which defines table wine as grape wine of not more than 14% alcohol by volume and dessert wine as more than 14% and not more than 24%.

What Is Mead?

The BJCP guidelines put it simply: mead is made primarily from honey, water and yeast. Small adjustments of acidity and tannin are allowed with citrus, tea or additions, but they should not be readily noticed, and yeast nutrients may be used but should not be detected. Everything else is a variation: fruit meads (melomels), spiced meads (metheglins), and so on.

Hydromel, Standard and Sack

Mead is classified by strength. The BJCP gives three bands with their original gravities: hydromel at 3.5 to 7.5% ABV (OG 1.035 to 1.080), standard at 7.5 to 14% (OG 1.080 to 1.120), and sack at 14 to 18% (OG 1.120 to 1.170). Sweetness is a separate scale: dry, semi-sweet or sweet. A sack mead does not have to be sweet, and a hydromel does not have to be dry.

What Is Wine?

In everyday use, wine is fermented grape juice, and under the federal standards of identity, grape wine is its own class. Wine made from other fruits is fruit wine, berry wine from berries, and wine from other farm products is agricultural wine. Grapes are unusual because they arrive with almost everything a wine needs: sugar, acid, tannin in the skins and seeds, and their own aroma. Ohio State University Extension's grape maturity fact sheet gives a desirable sugar level of 18 to 24 °Brix at harvest, depending on variety and style, which ferments out to a table wine without added sugar.

Mead vs Wine: Taste

A good mead tastes of the honey it was made from. Orange blossom honey gives a floral, citrusy mead; buckwheat gives a dark, malty one; wildflower lands in between. Because honey has little acid or tannin, a plain mead is softer and rounder than a wine at the same strength, and a dry mead can seem flat unless the maker adds some acid. The BJCP notes that tannin makes a mead seem drier than its residual sugar would suggest.

Wine tastes of the grape: fruit, acidity and, in reds, the grip of tannin from skins and seeds. Wine is generally the more structured of the two at the dinner table, while mead often reads as a dessert drink, even when it is not especially sweet. Fruit meads sit between the two, borrowing acid and color from the fruit.

Mead vs Wine: Alcohol Content

They overlap almost completely. A standard mead at 7.5 to 14% ABV covers the same range as most table wines, which federal rules cap at 14%. The differences are at the edges: hydromels go lower than nearly any wine, down to 3.5%, and sack meads reach 18% without any added spirit, a strength a grape wine only reaches in the fortified dessert category. In both, the strength depends on how much sugar the yeast had to work with; you can estimate it from two hydrometer readings with our wine ABV calculator.

Mead vs Honey Wine: Is There a Difference?

Not in substance. "Honey wine" is how mead is labeled under US federal rules: 27 CFR 4.21 says wine of the agricultural wine class made wholly from one agricultural product is designated by the word "wine" qualified by the name of that product, and gives "honey wine" as its first example. Some producers use "honey wine" for a sweeter, fruitier style and "mead" for a traditional one, but that is marketing, not a separate drink.

Where Mead and Wine Meet: Pyment and Cyser

There is a family of drinks that are both. The BJCP's 2015 mead guidelines define a pyment as a melomel (fruit mead) made with grapes, generally from juice, and note that pyments can be red, white or blush, just as with wine. A cyser is the apple equivalent: a melomel made with apples, generally cider, where the guidelines describe the mouthfeel as often wine-like, with natural acidity from the apples balancing the honey.

Why Make a Pyment

A pyment fixes the main weakness of a plain mead, the lack of acid and tannin, by borrowing both from the grape. It is also an easy way to stretch a small amount of good grape juice, or to give a grape wine more body and a honeyed finish. Replace part of the honey in a mead recipe with grape juice, or part of the sugar in a wine recipe with honey, and you are making one.

Other Fruit Meads

Any fruit wine can become a melomel by swapping the sugar for honey. Blackberry, cherry and peach all take honey well; the recipes in our recipe collection work with honey in place of sugar, measured by gravity rather than by weight, because honey carries some water. Our sugar calculator helps you hit the same starting gravity.

Mead vs Wine vs Cider vs Beer

Cider and beer are quicker because they are lower in alcohol and usually drunk young. Our cider kit guide covers the fastest of the four to make.

Making Mead vs Making Wine at Home

Mead: Simple Ingredients, Slower Fermentation

Mead has the shortest ingredient list of any home ferment, but honey is short of the nitrogen yeast need, so nutrient is not optional. The American Homebrewers Association's mead tutorial expects the airlock to slow after 2 to 3 weeks, when the mead moves to a secondary vessel to finish and clear, and suggests a few weeks to a few months of bulk aging before bottling. Honey is mostly sugar: the USDA's FoodData Central lists 82.1 g of total sugars per 100 g of honey, which is why 2 to 3 pounds per gallon gives a standard-strength mead.

Wine: Balanced From the Start

Grape juice already has the acid and tannin a wine needs, so there is less to adjust. A wine kit is the most predictable first batch of anything: concentrate, yeast and additives measured for you. Fresh grapes and fruit wines take more judgment but follow the same steps as mead: ferment, rack, clear, stabilize and bottle.

Which to Make First?

If you want the surest result in a 6 gallon batch, start with a wine kit. If you want a small, cheap first batch with one main ingredient, start with a gallon of mead. The equipment is the same, so whichever you start with, the other is one bag of ingredients away.

Compare the alternatives in our guides to the best mead making kits and the best wine making kits.

Wine and mead are for adults of legal drinking age. Enjoy them responsibly.