In the 21st century, mead seems to be as popular as it has been in a thousand years. Throughout Europe and North America, there are many meaderies producing quality enough mead.
But this trend is relatively recent, and seems to be in part driven by the perception of mead as a "Viking" beverage (for instance, a Danish meadery sells their mead in the US as "Viking Blood"), or otherwise the drink of choice of some pretty hardcore people (like most any Germanic group in the Migration era). Mead never seemed to have this popularity before then, and in many parts seems to have been forgotten or been considered a drink for old women.
So with a POD of 1800, can mead be associated with Romanticist revivals throughout Germany, Britain, Scandinavia, and elsewhere in Northern Europe? Can this cultural association (mead has a prominent place in Germanic mythology and legend) build a strong mead-making tradition which lasts into the 21st century? To what degree can mead supplant wine, which historically had taken over the market for mead from England to Russia? And in the United States, might maple syrup-derived "mead" (technically acerglyn, but produced exactly like mead with maple syrup instead of honey) be able to gain a place in the international market?