What is the oldest known fermented beverage?

Mead is the world's oldest alcoholic drink. Mead has been around for thousands of years. Dating back thousands of years, mead is an alcoholic beverage created by fermenting honey with water, sometimes with various fruits or spices. There’s evidence of mead being consumed thousands of years ago and it was the power drink of ancient Europe before winemaking had developed. Mead was once thought to be the drink of the gods, falling from the Heavens as dew and then gathered by bees. New research into English Heritage’s collections from Wroxeter and Hadrian’s Wall shows that mead was being made in the Roman period in Britain. It’s wonderful that this very old drink is now being discovered by a whole new generation. As one of the world’s oldest alcoholic drinks, mead has sometimes had quite an old world reputation, but we’ve seen that dramatically change over the last five years. With the success of Game of Thrones, as well as the rise in popularity of experimental cocktails, you could definitely call mead the new up and coming drink and our customers really enjoy that historical throwback with the modern twist.

Chemical analyses of ancient organic compounds absorbed into pottery jars from the early Neolithic village of Jiahu in Henan province in China show that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey, and fruit was being produced about 7000 BCE. This prehistoric drink paved the way for unique cereal beverages of the proto-historic second millennium B.C. Fermented beverages thus have played key roles in the development of human culture and technology, contributing to the advance and intensification of agriculture, horticulture, and food-processing techniques. How does ancient China, one of the primal centers for the rise of human civilization, fit into this picture of fermented beverage production, conspicuous consumption, and celebratory and ritual activities that are so well documented archaeologically, historically, and ethnographically elsewhere? A much earlier history for fermented beverages in China has long been hypothesized based on the similar shapes and styles of Neolithic pottery vessels to the magnificent Shang Dynasty bronze vessels, which were used to present, store, serve, drink, and ritually present fermented beverages during that period. By using a combined chemical, archaeobotanical, and archaeological approach, we present evidence here that ancient Chinese fermented beverage production does indeed extend back nearly nine millennia.