Queen, worker, drone. The social hierarchy of honeybees–rigid as the regular hexagonal architecture of the hive they build. Each bee has her own distinct role. Eggs are inevitably laid. Honey piles up incessantly. The bee can’t help herself–these behaviors are hardwired into her nature. While humans might not share a hive mind, there are unmistakable analogues to honey hoarding in the human world. In fact, for thousands of years, the governments of Ethiopia used social hierarchies for the same purpose bees do. To collect honey! Ethiopian royalty extracted payments of honey from peasants as a tax, so they could enjoy the beverage of kings, fermented honey wine or tej.
Tej, like most fermented honey products, has an ancient history. Natives of the Horn of Africa have been drinking the wine for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs speak of their southern neighbors as rich in beeswax. For as long as the sweet alcohol has been enjoyed, the royal governments of the land have been restricting its consumption to upper classes and demanding a honey tribute from the lower ones. Tej acted as a social marker of the elite, while the masses were stuck drinking tella beer. The story of Ethiopian tej is a two-way tale–first, royalty supported itself with a honey tax, second, the consumption of tej indicated who was royal in the first place.
Ancient Ethiopians were not so different from worker bees in that they accumulated honey collectively. The similarity stops there, however, because Ethiopian peasants paid their honey taxes under far more duress than a honey bee bumbling through flowers. Throughout history, various governments have controlled apiculture differently, but most sought to hoard its sweet crop monopolistically.
As early as the 1st century CE, the travel writings of the Roman geographer Strabo made note of the fact that Ethiopian royals drank honey, while peasants stuck to beer. “The drink of the people in general is an infusion of the paliurus (buckthorn); that of the tyrants is mead; the honey being expressed from some kind of flower.” While elites had already developed a taste for imported grape wines from distant lands like Syria by the 3rd century, the preeminence of tej stuck throughout history.
The fifteenth century saw a government official known as the Taj Azaj who was explicitly tasked with the management and maintenance of the royal tej supply. The imperial monopoly of honey and its wine would only be broken by royal favor itself, as some royal gifts of land in the late 1700s came with the right to make tej. Such arrangements were the exception. Most land holders had to pay their land tax in boxes or bags of honey. In the northern territory Tigray, where locals call honey ma’har and honey wine mes, communities had to pay a tax they called mar-directly equating honey with money.
Only recently has the royal monopoly began to dissipate. In the late 1880s, a court case under the auspices of Emperor Yohannes IV overturned a thousand years of precedent. A commoner, Getahun Gesse, accused of making tej without permission, was liberated. The emperor lifted the law against peasants making the drink. The nobles were furious. Allegedly, they believed, ”In the time of our fathers and grandfathers, persons found with tej in their houses were deprived of their land.” (from Pankhurst 63) The massive change only lasted until 1889, when the next emperor assumed the throne. Under Menelik II, the palace’s monopoly was restored tunil 1909 when public tej bars opened up in the capital Addis Ababa. Honey taxes were erased in 1935.
Why were royals so obsessed with monopolizing tej? More than just tasting sweet and delicious, tej served military, social, and medical purposes. Royalty had a vested interest in maintaining control of the production of the alcoholic wine.
During military campaigns, soldiers were provided rations of honey wine to consume. Supporting an army’s habit for the sweet drink took a supply of honey that could only be guaranteed by the entire population. The government tax on honey and monopoly on tej, therefore, solidified military loyalty. Commoners would be stealing from the military if they consumed their own honey, and soldiers were happy to drink a beverage of noble status.
Thanks to its longstanding noble association, tej became imbued with cultural significance. Drinking tej was so caught up in elite status, that status could be determined both by the kind of tej one drank and the cup from which one drank it. Tej fermented from Tigrayan white honey was of the highest quality, and some made tej from stores of honey aged more than a decade. Fine beakers of glass were a sign of status, but the most powerful men would drink their share out of a hollowed rhinoceros horn. Tej, in this regard, was truly a drink of the kings. By coveting the stuff, they were better able to demonstrate their nobility.
Lastly, tej was believed to have medicinal qualities. As the drink aged, in some cases for many years with an annual fortification of honey, it would decay into a vinegar that was believed to be a special medicine. The bitter leaves and barks that were used in the fermentation of the drink and even the interaction of the drink with horn cups were believed to have healing powers. The royalty had to ensure they would have access to the most refined and special versions of honey and wine for their health–particularly Menelik II who was notoriously paranoid of poison.
Tej is a simple honey wine with some uniquely Ethiopian twists. Like all meads, tej starts in a beehive. Ethiopian hives, or kofo, are traditionally cylinders up to a meter long formed out of ash and cow manure. A bizarre material, the combination of refuse may have insulating and insecticide properties. These cylinders are capped on the end with a flight hole allowing bees to enter and exit freely. During times of scarcity and drought, the bees would sometimes be fed flour to keep the colony alive.
Beekeepers can harvest their crop of honey up to 3 times in a year, depending on the kind of honey. The greatest and most coveted harvest is that of white honey in Tigray which occurs in September. This white honey is made by bees that feast on the aromatic nectars of labiate plants in the mint family. Other honeys can be harvested in November or May. Once harvested, the honey is traditionally stored in sacs known as lakwota.
In addition to honey, Ethiopian tej is made with the leaves or stems of a plant called gesho and sometimes another called tsado. The gesho is the shiny-leaf buckthorn or Rhamnus prinoides. The leaves or twigs can be boiled in water to extract the compound (unsurprisingly named) geshoidin which gives tej a distinct flavor and underlying bitterness. The gesho plant also provides important microbes for fermentation. The same plant is also a main ingredient in local tella beer. In other words, gesho is Ethiopian hops.
To actually make tej, one part honey is cut with water, frequently around 5 parts, and left to ferment for three to six days. The actual duration of fermentation is weather dependent and can last up to 20 days during colder months. Some processes involve skimming scum off of the top of the mixture throughout the fermentation. The gesho is either added to the pot at the beginning of the process, or a portion of the fermenting honey is removed and boiled along with the twigs and then later re-added. After the drink is fully fermented, it is filtered and consumed.
Because the drink sources its microbiome from twigs, the actual yeast and bacteria composition can differ. However, traditional fermenting yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and bacteria Lactobacillus are the most prominent in most examples.
Certain alternative methods involve adultering the honey with cane sugar during times of scarcity or high demand. Some regional tej makers also treat the fermenting vessels prior to use in order to infuse different flavors into the wine. Some smoke the pots with olive wood while others coat the interior with spurge sap. The sap imparts a bitter flavor in the tej.
Without one set recipe, the wine can vary widely in chemical properties. It is typically acidic, although not always within a given range. In terms of alcoholic content, tej can range anywhere from 7-11% alcohol by volume, with outliers as low as 2% and as high as 20%.
Today, Ethiopia is Africa’s largest producer of honey, yet only a fraction of it sells in international markets. Well over half of the honey produced domestically goes directly into the production of tej. For this reason, it has justifiably earned its name as the national drink of Ethiopia. This is even more impressive considering the diversity of locally brewed booze that exist around the country: tella, borde, korefe, ogol, and booka to name a few.
With such a range of methods over such a long period of time, tej is more of a moving target than a set beverage. It requires honey and gesho but the manner in which they are combined can differ. No two tej are the same. The drink can be cloudy and bitter or clear and bright. The honey that goes into it has a huge say in how the drink will finally taste. Particles of pollen from regional flowers will filter down to the bottom of a glass as a reminder that this is a natural product.
Its intoxicating properties beguile the drinker behind a sweet and sticky liquid. Indeed, some modern Ethipians are inclined to cut the wine with sparkling water in order to stave off the oozing feeling of honey drunkenness. Yet for hundreds of years,everyday Ethiopians were not allowed to sip upon the sweetness. Such a history of exclusivity and social cache gives tej a tantalizing allure. If you are tempted to try the honey wine, you’ll have to go to Ethiopia, or at least Washington D.C., where the largest population of Ethiopians exists outside of the country itself.
African Business July 20th 2012 • Ethiopia , & Collins, T. (2020, October 21). Honey: Ethiopia’s liquid gold. African Business. Retrieved April 29, 2022, from https://african.business/2012/07/economy/honey-ethiopias-liquid-gold/
Fentie, Eskindir Getachew, et al. “Cereal-and fruit-based Ethiopian traditional fermented alcoholic beverages.” Foods 9.12 (2020): 1781.
Lyons, Diane. “Tej Consumption and Production in the Commensal Politics and Political Economy of States in Northern Highland Ethiopia.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2021): 1-32.
Pankhurst, Richard. “Innovation and Misoneism during the Reign of Emperor Yoḥannǝs IV (1872–1889).” Aethiopica 8 (2005): 48-71.
Sahle, H., et al. “Assessment of honey production system, constraints and opportunities in Ethiopia.” Pharm Pharmacol Int J 6.1 (2018): 42-47.
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