But with the proliferation of other things to drink, mead, once a staple of so many cultures, faded into such ignominy that most of us know it as only something poured by a guy in a funny hat at a Renaissance Faire.

Now, from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore., and from Alaska to Hawaii, mead’s reputation is being restored. This may be partly due to the explosion in styles of mead as its makers move past the sweet, slightly caramelized, honey-forward traditional mead of that Renaissance Faire. Today, you can find local meads dry-hopped and as flinty and sere as the bleakest unoaked Chablis; light summer quaffers with the freshness and subtle bubbles of a good prosecco; complex, multilayered dessert meads perfect with chocolate; even seasonal meads flavored with saffron, sage, fruits or juniper berries.

“Mead is a wine and a wine made with honey instead of grapes,” said Vicky Rowe, a director of the annual Mazer Cup International Mead Competition, whose entrants have doubled to 218, from 100, in just the last three years. “People are realizing that’s what it is and treating it as such.”

As a wine’s character can be determined by its fruit and provenance, mead’s flavors can be attributed to the honey that’s used. Terroir is captured in a way winemakers only dream of, from the flowers whose pollen bees collect in a particular area at a particular time.

Mr. Beran said, “First, there are dandelions and maple trees blooming, clover and apple blossoms, so it’s very light spring honey.” The bees deposit that honey into the first of a set of boxes which are stacked on top of each other in hives. “By the end of the season you might have five or eight or even more boxes of honey, and you can see the progression of the floral diversity through the summer in the transition from the first box to the last box,” he said. “Summer is medium honey from alfalfa, then in the fall you get darker, richer, flavorful wildflower honey. So when I’m making a delicate mead, I’ll use the early clover apple blossom from the bottom frames. When we’re going for a traditional mead, we use a darker honey that tends to give the mead more character and structure.”