Lavender honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

lavender flower, warm hay, beeswax, dried apricot

Flavour

lavender, candied apricot, light caramel, a soapy edge if strong

Finish

Long and floral; the perfume outlives the sweetness.

Intensity

Pronounced

Sweetness

Sweet

Bitterness

None

Acidity

Moderate

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

Extra light amber (34-50 mm Pfund)toLight amber (50-85 mm Pfund)

Warm pale amber, sometimes with a faint pink cast.

On setting: Turns pale beige and opaque.

Texture

Thick but pourable; Soft set; Creamed

Crystallisation

Moderate — granulates over a few months

Granulates reliably over a few months with fine crystals. Much of the French crop is sold deliberately crémeux, which suits it — the set concentrates the perfume on the palate rather than letting it run off a spoon.

Typical composition

Moisture

15–18% (typically 16.5%)

Fructose

37–42% (typically 39.5%)

Glucose

31–36% (typically 34%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

0.8–0.95 (typically 0.87)

pH

3.6–4.4 (typically 4)

Electrical conductivity

0.15–0.4 mS/cm (typically 0.25 mS/cm)

These are typical ranges assembled across published work, not measurements of a specific honey.

What these mean: the sugars and the ratio · moisture · conductivity · how each is measured

Where it comes from

Floral source

True lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) at altitude, and lavandin (L. × intermedia) at lower elevations. Lavandin is a sterile hybrid grown at far greater scale for oil, and it yields more nectar — most commercial lavender honey is substantially lavandin.

Origins

Provence and the Drôme in France above all; also Spain, and increasingly Bulgaria as lavender cultivation there has expanded.

Origin pages

• France
• Provence
• Europe
• The Mediterranean
• Bulgaria

Resolved from both directions — origins this honey names, and origins that name it.

Origin protection

Miel de Provence carries a French and EU protected geographical indication covering lavender and multifloral honeys from the region.

Harvest

June to August (northern hemisphere)

Later at altitude. The staggering of true lavender and lavandin across elevations extends the working season.

The bees

Lavender is worked heavily by honey bees, bumblebees and solitary bees together. Hives are moved onto the plateaux for the flow in the same transhumance pattern used for the region's sheep.

Usual processing

Spun (centrifugally extracted), Coarsely strained, Creamed (seeded and controlled-set)

What to do with it

Use it where you want to taste lavender, and use less than instinct suggests — lavender crosses from floral to soapy at a threshold that is lower in food than in scent. Excellent with stone fruit and in shortbread; poor in savoury glazes, where it reads as perfume.

At the tableDessertsBakingWith cheeseDressingsIn cocktails

Pairings

• Peaches and apricotsClassic

  The honey already carries a stone-fruit note, so this is amplification rather than contrast.

• Roquefort and other bluesClassic

  The salt and the perfume push in opposite directions and hold each other in place; a mild honey would simply be swallowed by the cheese.

• Shortbread and sablés

  Butter carries floral aromatics better than any other medium in a biscuit.

• Gin

  Botanical against botanical — the honey lands in the same aromatic family the spirit is already working in.

History and traditional use

The lavender honey trade grew alongside the perfume industry at Grasse: fields planted for oil produced a nectar surplus, and beekeepers followed the plantings up onto the plateaux each summer.

• Central to Provençal confectionery, particularly nougat de Montélimar, which is defined in part by its lavender honey content.

Traditional use records that people have done something, and for how long. It is not evidence that it works.