Dreaded Mead is a Lancashire-based meadery which focuses on honest ingredients and simple but mighty flavour. They offer a diverse range of flavours, alongside some spectacularly tempting seasonal bottles (their Valentine’s Day mead mimics strawberries and cream!). I have, in the past, very much enjoyed a bottle of their Traditional Mead, which kept things very simple and straightforward to great effect.
How does this ethos apply to the rest of the flavours in their repertoire? Let’s find out.
BLUEBERRY MEAD – 3.5/5
Blueberry mead is such an iconic flavour and a firm favourite of viking-loving mead drinkers the world over. This mix of berry and honey is practically inseparable, and every meadery and their mums have made some take on it. Interestingly enough, despite being one of the most popular combinations, every one I’ve ever tried has tasted different. Chalice Mead have a classic blueberry mead which leans more towards the super sweet flavours of both honey and berry, while Nidhoggr ran with a lighter, earthier approach which earned it a spot on my top meads of 2025.
So we have a combination that, despite sounding very simple, always seems to manifest in a different way depending on the meadery. How have Dreaded Mead mixed these two iconic elements of mead together? Before sampling these two bottles I’ve only ever tried their Traditional Mead, which I found to be sweet but surprisingly delicate. Their meads come in at 9% ABV which makes for a rather mellow but incredibly smooth drink. Similar in pure honey taste to Nidhoggr, but with a significantly lower alcohol percentage, which actually changes the overall flavour profile quite significantly. It makes for a smooth mead instead of a hearty one, which may be more to some drinkers’ tastes.
The blueberry in this bottle acts as a sort of grounding force for that mellow sweetness – the fruit in this melomel does not burst forth as a splash or overtone, but a subtle hint, mingling carefully with the gentle but pleasant floral notes of the honey. I actually wish it employed the blueberry in greater strength, as it seems like a lot of the flavour has been held back as to preserve the integrity of the mead itself. Admirable, given the carefully smooth sweetness Dreaded Mead has to offer, but I’d love to see the blueberry shine a bit brighter.
Dreaded Mead‘s Blueberry Mead combines what might be some of the smoothest mead you’ve ever drunk with a gentle, earthy touch of slighty sour blueberry. Unfortunately, the standard in this melomel’s category has been set rather high, and the fruit notes just doesn’t come through quite as spectacularly as they could. Still a very nice bottle of mead, and if you like the sound of it you can get your own bottle here.
SPICED CHAI MEAD 5/5
Imagine my delight, as a long-time fan of eccentric chap-hop rapper Professor Elemental, when I lifted this first bottle of mead from the package and saw his name plastered across the label. It makes, of course, perfect sense that the pseudo-Victorian professor would lend his name to a spiced chai mead, but it did also set rather high expectations…
Which, luckily, Dreaded Mead met quite spectacularly. I honestly think this may be my favourite metheglin now. The taste is smooth and sweet with a subtle but incredibly well rounded honey flavour, accentuated by chai spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. Not one of those spices is present in an overpowering amount, instead all kind of fluttering together on the tongue to create the ultimate English drink – alcoholic breakfast tea.
The tea flavour is not there in force, it’s very subtle, and I’d say the biggest contribution it makes is mouthfeel – the tannins that typically come with tea can impart an excellent body to mead, which pairs quite nicely with a zesty note that rings out clearly at the finish. It’s just a perfectly balanced bottle, making expert use of Dreaded Mead‘s sweet honey base to deliver an unforgettable drink.
I have consumed many bottles of medium-sweet mead over the last few months, and while they are certainly delicious, it was refreshing to discover a pair of bottlers that both get the sweetness just right. Both the Blueberry Mead and this Spiced Chai are just sweet enough to be moreish and satisfying without that cloying, lingering sugar rush that people so often ascribe to mead.
With the spices so well balanced, a luxurious, silky mouthfeel and a mellow sweetness that both refreshes and entices all at once, this has all the makings of a legendary bottle of mead. It’s not as complex as some of my other favourites like Aegir’s Mead or Kvasir’s Blood, rather a simple, fun concept that has been executed to perfection – and sometimes that’s the most impressive thing to pull off. An absolutely incredible mead which I will be revisiting time and time again – get your own bottle at the Dreaded Mead website.