Honey: which to choose
Some time ago I was at the supermarket (of course, I prefer local markets, but sometimes I also have the supermarket) 😬 and in front of the shelf of jams and honey I found myself next to a couple of boys.
They wondered which honey to choose to combine with cheeses for a dinner they were organizing with their friends.
Faced with all those proposals, with very different prices, they were in trouble and asked themselves a lot of questions.
A question that particularly interested me was: what are the reasons why a honey from the large-scale retail trade often has a much lower cost than that of artisanal production.
Let’s find out some of these reasons, qualitative and not only, which often determine this difference.
Which honey to choose?
Many farms like ours, for example, choose to produce raw honey, that is honey that is not subjected to pasteurization and filtration processes.
These procedures are used with the aim of making the honey more fluid and avoiding crystallization, but sometimes also to make a mixture of honeys from different production areas and of different qualities homogeneous.
These techniques allow the honey to have constant characteristics and not to change its appearance over time but also remove most of the substances that characterize it and determine its quality.
In short, a great pity for all the work done by the bees and for the taste pleasure of consumers.
In fact, honey is the result of an intense work done by bees in a specific territory, from which it takes its flavors and aromas.
If produced following the traditional ritual of agriculture, it helps to make the bees live more peacefully and without particular stress, improving the quality and value of the honey itself.
All this manual work, done with a lot of patience and passion, therefore makes the artisan honey unique and different, so much so that it represents a new discovery with different shades of taste and color in each production.
Just think that sometimes the color can even slightly vary even from jar to jar in the same production.
At the same time, however, as you can imagine, this craftsmanship, in order to produce a honey of higher quality and value, makes the production phase more complex and delicate, increasing time, risks and consequently costs.
So, getting back to our guys from the supermarket, how could we recommend them?
Monoflora or wildflower …? Sweet or aromatic …?
Regardless of personal tastes, which we know are not discussed, as we have seen in the previous lines, we recommend first of all to be wary of too low prices, because as for many other products, quality inevitably comes at a cost.
Another tip is certainly to always read the label carefully to know the place of production and packaging of honey.
And finally, and here we are biased, we recommend if possible to buy Italian (the national product is scrupulously controlled) and maybe directly from a local producer.
In this way there is the possibility of being able to go and visit the farm and to speak directly with those who keep the bees day after day, to know the place where that honey is born and to see with one’s own eyes the work and daily passion. that many beekeepers put in every jar of honey that we will go to taste.
And this opportunity in our opinion is priceless …
