Floral source

Definition

Named on the label for a monofloral honey and verifiable by pollen analysis. The floral source supplies the sugar ratio, the aroma compounds, the minerals and the phenolics — almost everything a taster notices. The bee supplies enzymes and evaporation and no flavour.

Where the word gets used loosely

Floral misdescription is the commonest form of honey fraud at retail: ordinary honey sold as manuka, acacia or sidr. Pollen analysis is what settles it.

Honey records that discuss this

• Wildflower honeyVaries with the season and the landscape. Pale spring crops are floral and light; late-summer crops darker, fruitier and stronger.
• Himalayan cliff honeyStrong, dark and complex, with a bitter herbal edge and a slightly astringent finish. Spring harvests are frequently sharper and more bitter than autumn ones.
• Thyme honeyWarm, herbal and savoury — thyme and dry stone, with a peppery lift and a very long finish.
• Forest honeydew honeyResinous, malty and mineral, with far less sweetness than its darkness suggests. Closer to treacle and pine forest than to anything floral.
• Pine honeydew honeyResinous, malty and markedly less sweet than floral honey, with a woody, slightly salty depth and no floral character at all.
• Mikan honeyDelicate and bright with a pronounced fresh citrus-blossom aroma and a clean acidity — lighter and fresher than Mediterranean orange blossom honey.

Guide records that discuss this

• What is honey?Honey is nectar that bees have concentrated and chemically altered, then sealed in wax. Every property people notice about it — the sweetness, the keeping quality, the setting — follows from that process.
• Types of honey: how the catalogue actually dividesHoney is sorted four different ways at once — by floral source, by colour, by texture and by processing — and a jar label usually mixes them. Knowing which axis a word belongs to is most of what it takes to read one.
• Mild honeys: a guide to the gentle end of the catalogueA shortlist of the honeys that sweeten without asserting themselves, and what distinguishes them from one another when there is so little to distinguish.
• Why honey chemistry variesFive things decide what a laboratory finds in a jar of honey — the plant, the season, the bee, the place and what happened after extraction. Knowing which one moves which number is the difference between reading an analysis and guessing at it.
• Geography and honey chemistryHoney has a terroir argument attached to it, and part of it is true. Place does reach the jar — but almost entirely through which plants grow there, not through the soil itself.