Tej
Tej (ጠጅ) is a honey wine, close to mead, brewed from honey, water and the leaves and stems of a bitter shrub called gesho. Once a drink of Ethiopia’s kings and nobles, it is now poured in small bars called tej bets across the country, and both Wikipedia and Parts Unknown call it Ethiopia’s national drink.
Key facts
- Origin
- Ethiopia; also brewed in Eritrea
- Main ingredients
- Honey, water, gesho (Rhamnus prinoides)
- Strength
- Typically 7–11% alcohol (Wikipedia), up to 16% (Roads & Kingdoms)
- Served in
- A berele, a rounded glass flask
- Where to drink it
- Tej bets (tej houses) across Ethiopia
Honey, water and gesho
Gesho (Rhamnus prinoides) is often called “Ethiopian hops”, as both Roads & Kingdoms and Craft Beer & Brewing note. Wikipedia describes a typical method: one part honey is mixed with five parts water, the chopped stems and leaves of gesho are boiled and added, and the vessel is covered with a cotton cloth and stirred daily. The wine is left for a week or longer in warm weather, or 15 to 20 days where it is cooler, and is filtered through a cloth before drinking.
Recipes vary from maker to maker. Craft Beer & Brewing names adey abeba, a bright yellow flower, as the one most renowned for tej honey, and notes that tej on the northern plateau towards the end of the year is often made from it, while one tej bet owner in Lalibela, profiled by Parts Unknown, adds sorghum, maize, fennel and coffee.
Mild, medium or strong
Finished tej is yellowish, cloudy and sweet. Its strength varies: Wikipedia gives a typical range of 7 to 11 per cent alcohol, while Roads & Kingdoms says it can reach 16 per cent. Many bars offer it in three grades. Craft Beer & Brewing describes the light kind as very sweet and barely alcoholic, and the strong kind as dry and tangy, often above 10 per cent.
Today it is most often served in a berele, a rounded glass flask, according to Roads & Kingdoms, which adds that the most old-fashioned drinkers still take it from an animal horn, as their ancestors did.
From the royal court to everyone
Wikipedia describes tej as thought to be one of the oldest alcoholic drinks, noting that excavations at Beta Samati, an ancient Aksumite site, found evidence of wine drinking; legend, as Roads & Kingdoms recounts, has the Queen of Sheba presenting it to King Solomon. The Portuguese priest Francisco Álvares, in Ethiopia in the 1500s, judged honey wine the best of the local drinks.
It was long a drink of the powerful. Wikipedia records that before the 1900s it was largely reserved for the king and his court, and Parts Unknown describes it as the prized drink of nobles and soldiers in the 19th century, when villagers drank tella, a home-brewed beer. Today tej is drunk by all, at weddings and festivals and on holidays such as Enkutatash, the Ethiopian New Year, Timkat and Meskel.
Life in the tej bet
A tej bet, literally a tej house, is a small bar found in villages, towns and cities throughout Ethiopia. Parts Unknown describes modest buildings, mostly run by women and mostly visited by men, where neighbours swap news and azmari musicians play the masinko, sing of legendary figures and tease the customers. Guests often snack on roasted kolo and kita, a thin spiced bread; at Topia Tejbet in Addis Ababa, Craft Beer & Brewing found tej served with raw meat in berbere sauce.
In Emblem World, tej sits in the Ethiopia drink collection, where people discover and rate local food, drink and music.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Tej
- Roads & Kingdoms: Everyman’s Drink, Descended from Ancient Royal Libations (Akinyi Ochieng, 4 April 2016)
- Parts Unknown: Tej bet, Ethiopia’s honey-wine houses (Arefaynie Fantahun, 18 July 2018)
- Craft Beer & Brewing: From Tella to Tej, Ethiopia’s Ethereal Fermentations (Martin Thibault)
Checked by Emblem editorial on 9 October 2026.