Honey is not just honey
Honey is not just honey.
For a long time honey was a jar in the cupboard, something to stir into rooibos tea or spread on bread with peanut butter. Slowly I began to taste it differently. To notice that each honey has its own flavour, its own colour, its own particular sweetness. Each jar has its own texture. A texture that has to be negotiated with, form the very runny balancing act to the crystals that has to coaxed with a little warmth. I realised that I wasn’t tasting just honey but places, trees, orchards, flowers, sunshine, familiar places but translated, new places.
Winemakers have a word for this: terroir. The way wine carries within it the soil, the slope, the microclimate of the vineyard. Architects use something similar the ‘philosophy of place’, the idea that good buildings grow from and respond to the land they stand on. We’ve always known that honey does this. It encodes the landscape it comes from, season after season, flower by flower. Sure, we forget when we’ve gone to the supermarket a few times and grabbed the easy squeezy that always has the same colour.
On the west coast of South Africa where I grew up, the honeys were eucalyptus, fynbos and orange blossom. The eucalyptus – bloekom in Afrikaans – is not a native, it came from Australia, but is an ubiquitous, synonymous even, presence on farmsteads. Near my grandparents’ home on the farm there was a bloekom bos where a neighbour, who is a market gardener and beekeeper, kept hives. The exchange was always a few jars honey. The area is within the fynbos biome. So honey from the veld, the uncultivated land, would be fynbos honey. Rooibos tea and buchu are two of the more well-known species, they typify the low growing and tough flora of this extraordinarily diverse and highly endemic biome. Because of this fynbos honey has a taste that is hard to pin or describe, but utterly enchanting. Nearby, at Citrusdal, there were orange orchards on an international scale. Therefore orange blossom honey.
Later, living in London with an Italian partner of the type who returns from home visits with suitcases full of food, I discovered the Italian honeys. Dandelion and chestnut – tarassaco e castagno – became my favourites. Dandelion for its audacious yellow. Chestnut for being beautifully dark and slightly bitter. I became fascinated by the idea of bitter honey. The contrast of sweet and bitter within the same, perfectly complementary, inseparable.
In Cornwall someone told me about having a teaspoon of honey from where you live as a remedy for hay fever. Since the hay fever was quite debilitating and the over the counter anti histamine even worse, I got good at spotting local honey. And there was always the honey lady at the twice weekly market on Truro’s Lemon Quay. Also in Truro, at the Polish food store, I discovered buckwheat honey, which is a favourite. Love the earthiness.
Now in Scotland it is mostly heather honey. The taste of moorland in late summer.
Once I attended a honey tasting while staying at The Newt in Somerset. I remember there was an impressive array of honey to taste, one or two very unusual honeys, and I remember the presenter showing us the quantity of honey each bee makes in their lifetime. It is so small. I was somewhat taken aback thinking how casual we are with honey. One teaspoon of honey is hundreds of bees’ life work! There is something sorrowful in that, and something else – an invitation. An invitation to pause and meditate. To let that teaspoon unfold into the lives of bees, the lives of plants, a season, all the breezes, all the rain, all the sunshine, all the moonlit nights, all the dark nights of that season. The owls and deer that shared the territory with the bees and plants. The patient beekeeper.
Which makes honey such a great gift in my opinion. A small jar in the luggage for the friend who lives in the city and haven’t had the chance yet to come and visit me, swim in the sea and go for long walks. A jar for family back home who wonder about where I live and what it is like. A jar for friends who have everything and don’t need anything. A housewarming gift for a friend who lives locally. Honey lets me show people where I live. Honey lets me share my home. And through honey I become part of the landscape, it is a way of belonging to a place.
Honey is not just honey.
