The Story of Mandala Meadery: Joshua’s Journey to Bring Mead to India

Have you ever tried mead?

For most people in India, the answer is probably no.

That unfamiliarity is part of what makes Joshua's journey so interesting.

An American who came to India, fell in love with the country and eventually decided to build a meadery here, Joshua found himself working with a drink that was still largely unknown to the Indian drinking audience.

And introducing mead is not always easy.

Call it "honey wine" and people often imagine something extremely sweet, thick and vaguely medieval. Call it "mead" and there is a good chance someone pictures Vikings drinking from enormous wooden cups.

Neither image really tells the story.

For Joshua, the challenge was to show people what mead could actually be.

And that begins with something deceptively simple: honey, water and yeast.

Finding the right honey

Choosing the honey was not a decision Joshua wanted to make quickly.

Before settling on the honey for Mandala's first expression, he travelled across more than 13 states in India, tasting and studying different varieties along the way.

India has no shortage of interesting honey. Different regions offer their own characteristics, from forest honeys to distinctive floral varieties.

Eventually, Joshua settled on Kashmiri acacia honey.

The choice was not simply about the story behind the ingredient or the romance of putting Kashmir on a bottle. It was about what the honey could contribute to the finished mead.

Traditional mead leaves very little room to hide.

When your foundation is honey, water and yeast, the quality of the honey becomes immediately apparent. There are no fruits, spices or layers of other ingredients to cover it up.

Joshua wanted something delicate, bright and floral, with enough character to stand on its own.

Mandala's first expression is 11% ABV, with notes of green apple, pear, citrus and light florals rather than the heavy sweetness many people associate with a honey-based drink.

And that brings us to one of the biggest misconceptions about mead.

Honey doesn't automatically mean sweet.

Mead isn't one thing

Perhaps the biggest challenge for mead is that people often assume the category has a single identity.

It doesn't.

Mead can be dry or sweet, light and refreshing or rich and dessert-like. It can also be made with fruit, herbs, spices and a wide range of other ingredients.

So saying "I don't like mead" after trying one bottle doesn't necessarily tell you much about whether you like mead as a category.

Joshua often compares it to wine.

You wouldn't decide that you dislike wine because you didn't enjoy one particular sweet or heavy bottle. Mead works in much the same way.

There is a whole range of styles to discover.

That distinction matters in India, where the category is still finding its audience.

For someone encountering mead for the first time, the expectation of something thick and sugary can be enough to put them off before they have even tried it.

Mandala's approach offers a different introduction.

An old drink finding a new audience (Mandala Meadery)

There is also something interesting about Joshua bringing mead to India.

Honey-based alcoholic drinks are not entirely foreign to the subcontinent. India has its own history of fermented honey-based beverages, although changing drinking traditions and the economics of working with honey gradually pushed them away from the mainstream.

So Mandala isn't necessarily introducing an entirely alien idea.

In some ways, it is helping people rediscover a category that once had a place here.

But Joshua isn't trying to recreate the past.

He is building something for the present Indian drinker and trying to demonstrate that mead can sit comfortably alongside the wines, spirits and other beverages people already know.

When nature decides the production

The Mandala story doesn't stop with finding the right honey.

The production itself begins with the harvest.

Before deciding how much mead can be produced, Joshua and his team have to consider the season.

Was it too dry?

Too wet?

Too hot?

Too cold?

How healthy were the bees?

And, most importantly, how much suitable honey is actually available?

That makes production less predictable than simply setting an annual target and working backwards.

A batch might be 5,000 litres.

Another might be 20,000 litres.

The harvest ultimately has a say.

Once the honey is selected and tested, fermentation takes roughly a month. The mead is then conditioned, allowing the flavours and aromas to develop before it is bottled.

There is no need to force the process.

Letting the harvest speak

Perhaps the most interesting part of Joshua's approach is that Mandala isn't trying to make every year's mead an exact replica of the one before it.

The team can control the honey they select.

They can control the fermentation.

They can control the production process.

But they cannot control the weather, the flowers, the bees or the harvest.

And that is where Mandala's story becomes bigger than simply making an alcoholic drink.

Honey is an agricultural ingredient, and agricultural ingredients change.

Every season can bring something slightly different.

For Joshua, that isn't necessarily a problem to be solved. It is part of what makes working with honey interesting in the first place.

The goal is not to make nature behave identically every year. It is to understand what the harvest offers and make the most of it.

A different introduction to mead

Joshua came to India and found himself drawn to a drink with very little established presence among Indian drinkers.

Now, through Mandala Meadery, he is trying to give that drink a new identity.

Not as a Viking drink.

Not simply as "honey wine."

And certainly not as another sugary novelty.

But as something that can be delicate, complex and distinctly its own.

Mandala's story is ultimately the story of Joshua discovering India, discovering mead and deciding that the two could belong together.

And perhaps that is the most interesting way to introduce India to mead.