Honey Tasting- a taste of Terroir

Terroir- the taste of a place
“Terroir” in French or ‘Terreno” in Italian means ‘the taste of a place’ which is a popular term mostly known for wine. But it is not just wine, even olive oil, coffee, chocolate, tomato, heritage wheat, tea, etc have a strong expression of terroir when they are artisanal natural products. The crop grown in a given terroir exhibits the characteristics of the soil, the climate and the variety.

Honey expresses the most distinct terroir
If you are a specialist in terroir, artisanal honey is one of the natural products you cannot miss. Bees are working directly with the land where the role of the beekeepers are their health carers at most. No one can ever control where and from what plant the bees are getting their pollen from. The true artisanal honey is heavily subject to harvest and the weather because the vegetation like wildflowers can vary greatly according to the climate of the year.

Sicily has a diverse terroir
Sicily is a Mediterranean island with the tallest active volcano in Europe. It is hard to imagine how diverse the climate and landscape is in Sicily. Let me give you an example. Having a 3,300-metre high active volcano, we can enjoy a good range of fruits from subtropical climate like banana and mango to temperate climate, like apples and nuts within an-hour drive. Now, you can imagine how rich the vegetation is in Sicily and how much diversity the bees can enjoy.

Tasting honey is fun
Different honey has different flavour profiles, smell and colour. It is not only important to taste the artisanal honey to appreciate the hard work of the bees and the beekeeper, it is also fun to learn about the subtle but distinctive difference of the artisanal honey.

Taste the honey, taste the terroir
We have 5 different types of organic honey harvested in different zones in Sicily- Organic wildflower honey (Mount Peloritani), Organic wildflower honey (Mount Etna), Organic wildflower honey (Mount Erei), Organic chestnut honey and Organic eucalyptus honey. They all represent a distinctive terroir. In general, each type of honey shows a specific feature of the terroir. But in recent years, due to the extreme weather, the terroir has been changing rapidly. Although the production gets more unstable each year, sometimes, there are surprises. Last year, in a mountainous zone, a wildflower honey has a particular flavour and fragrance strongly resembled sun-dried tomatoes.

On top of enjoying the health benefits of organic honey, let’s have fun with honey tasting at home.