Mild honeys: a guide to the gentle end of the catalogue

The shortlist

How to choose between them

Once you are inside the mild category, floral source is almost irrelevant and two other things decide. The first is texture: acacia and blue curls stay liquid indefinitely, while kiawe and ak bal set hard and white and are eaten with a knife. The second is price, which varies by a factor of ten across this list for reasons that have nothing to do with how they taste.

• If you want a pouring honey that never sets: acacia or Dalmatian sage.
• If you want a spreading honey: kiawe, ak bal or creamed clover.
• If you want mildness with a little character: tawari or Alcarria rosemary.
• If you want to sweeten without adding any flavour at all: blue curls.
• If you want value: clover, alfalfa or berseem.

Mild is not the same as bland

Three honeys on this list are prized specifically for what they do within a narrow range. Tawari has a genuine butterscotch note that survives on plain yoghurt. Kiawe's appeal is texture rather than flavour — it is closer to whipped butter than to anything most people picture as honey. Dalmatian sage has a faint medicinal quality that is unmistakable once you have noticed it.

Why mild honeys are the ones people actually finish

There is a pattern worth naming. People buy strong and unusual honeys, taste them with interest, and then find the jar still two-thirds full a year later. The mild honey bought without much thought is the one that runs out. This is not a failure of taste; it is the difference between a honey you want to experience and a honey you want to eat.

A mild honey has to survive repetition, which is a genuinely demanding test. It must be pleasant on the fortieth morning as well as the first, which rules out anything with a strong or unusual note however good that note is. Acacia, clover and the pale box honeys pass this test precisely because they do not insist on being noticed.

The practical consequence is that the sensible household keeps two jars rather than one. The mild jar does the daily work and gets replaced regularly; the interesting jar comes out for cheese, for tasting, and for the occasions when honey is the point rather than the accompaniment. Trying to make one jar do both is how people end up disliking honey.