Description
Awarded a coveted Two-Star Prize in the Great Taste Awards 2017
According to the judges: "This honey is dark and viscous with a delicious deep honey aroma." and "A classic arbutus honey with a fabulous texture and indeed a roasted coffee bean bitterness. Amazing length. This is an intriguing honey, a great example."
Rossend's raw arbutus honey is an incredibly unique type of honey. Alongside its honey sweetness, it is quite bitter, like strong dark coffee or very dark chocolate. It has a beautiful after taste, but many are surprised by its initial flavour. It is one of the most overt tasting varieties we have experienced! Very light in consistency but very dark brown in colour. This is a connoisseur variety for those with a love of unique and potent honey.
Colour: This particular honey is a very dark brown when runny with a shade of purple and a hint of deep red in the light. The colour lightens significantly when crystalised to something similar to a coffee with a splash of milk. It often separates into distinct runny and crystalised layers.
Where does the honey come from? Our arbutus honey comes from Catalonia in Spain. The Catalonian Pyrenees are known for their pristine forests, high peaks and heavenly meadows, rushing rivers, winding streams and thundering waterfalls.
Who produces this honey? This arbutus honey comes from Rossend. He treats honey like an art form and you can really tell. It has such a perfect consistency and the varieties range from very subtle to very overt. He has won many awards for his honey including from the well renowned iTQi (International Taste and Quality Institute) who rated several of his honey varieties at the top level in the superior taste award category.
What about the plant the honey comes from? The Arbutus unedo bush is an evergreen, also known as madrono in Spanish and is nicknamed 'strawberry tree' due to its fruit, which look a bit like strawberries. However, these berries are not overly sweet, leaning more to acidic, but they are apparently very refreshing. The fruit of this bush is sometimes used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Common uses: Arbutus honey is known as a gourmet honey by connoisseurs and those with adventurous tastes, so it really adds a unique flavour to dishes. Savoury foods really benefit from its rich, bittersweet taste.
Arbutus honey facts: Arbutus honey is a rare variety, which is only found in good quantity in 3 places in the world - Portugal, Sardinia and Greece, and it's one of the most potent tasting varieties you can find. It contains homogentisic acid, which gives it its brown pigment as well as other unique properties. Arbutus honey is also being researched by scientists for potential chemopreventive treatments for colon cancer.
Please know that raw honey does crystalise and this is a natural process that occurs mainly due to the natural glucose in raw honey.