An exciting new sparkling drink from Cape Town has launched in the UK. Made in South Africa with three all natural ingredients; honey, yeast and water. Van Hunks Sparkling Mead is one of the few drinks brands in the world to have successfully achieved a consistently high-quality bottle-fermented mead.

Designed for those whose palates have matured away from sugary-sweet drinks, Van Hunks Brut Sparkling Mead is unexpectedly dry with refined bubbles. The first two Van Hunks expressions are a white sparkling mead and a rosé sparkling mead, fermented with hibiscus. Van Hunks Rosé Sparkling Mead offers a great, all natural alternative to Pink Prosecco this Christmas.

No artificial flavourings or additional sugars are added to Van Hunks Sparkling Meads, tapping into the trend for healthier, lower sugar drinks.

Van Hunks Sparkling Mead is dry and refreshing, with hints of floral overtones of South Africa’s famous Fynbos and is best enjoyed as a pre-dinner aperitif or as an alternative to sparkling wine. Van Hunks Sparkling Mead is presented in a clear glass bottle, with a striking label and a Champenoise-style cork, perfect for celebrations which creates the same pop and sense of occasion you get from opening a bottle of Champagne or sparkling wine.

The small-batch sparkling mead is inspired by the legend, Jan Van Hunks, and created out of the natural splendour of Cape Town and its surroundings. The meadery is based at the foot of the Table Mountain reserve in South Africa.

The meads are produced using honey from honeybees, which feast on Fynbos wildflowers in the smallest floral kingdom in the world on South Africa’s Cape. Van Hunks uses a patented dry fermentation process to ferment the honey, resulting in a completely dry base mead.

As legend has it, Van Hunks was notorious for escaping the ordinary and had a keen imagination and tenacious spirit. Pipe packed and drink in hand, he would stroll through the Fynbos and scale the sandstone mountain cliffs in search of the perfect perch and contemplate the beauty of it all. The story goes that he out-witted the devil in a smoking competition, but not before the smoke that they had made had covered the mountain, forming the famous tablecloth cloud on Table Mountain. In truth, the tablecloth cloud is created by the warm south-easterly breeze rising up the mountain slopes, meeting colder air at higher altitude. Condensation takes place and a thick mist soon coats the upper-most regions of the mountain, which waters the flowers Van Hunks’ bees feast on.

Van Hunks Sparkling Mead RRP: £25 ABV: 12%

Available from: Van Hunks Drinks