Tea blossom honey

Flavour and aroma

Aroma

green tea, fresh leaf, light florals

Flavour

tea, light bitterness, cream, faint grass

Finish

Medium, with a lingering tea-like bitterness.

Intensity

Moderate

Sweetness

Moderately sweet

Bitterness

Noticeable

Acidity

Low

Colour, texture and crystallisation

Colour

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

Pale gold, and opaque almost immediately.

On setting: Sets to a dense pale cream, frequently before it reaches the buyer.

Texture

Crystallised; Soft set; Creamed

Crystallisation

Very fast — can set in the comb before it is extracted

Very fast, and it commonly sets before extraction. The Chinese trade generally treats this as normal rather than as a fault.

Typical composition

Moisture

16–20% (typically 18%)

Fructose

33–39% (typically 36%)

Glucose

35–41% (typically 38%)

Glucose-to-fructose ratio

1–1.15 (typically 1.06)

pH

3.7–4.5 (typically 4.1)

Electrical conductivity

0.2–0.6 mS/cm (typically 0.35 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

Camellia sinensis and related Camellia species, principally in tea plantations left to flower after the harvest.

Origins

Southern China — Zhejiang, Hunan, Fujian, Guangxi and Yunnan — and to a lesser degree Japan and Vietnam.

Origin pages

• Asia
• China
• Vietnam

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

Harvest

October to December (northern hemisphere)

An autumn flow after the final leaf harvest, and one of the last crops of the Chinese season.

The bees

Much tea honey comes from Apis cerana in small fixed apiaries in the hill tea districts, where the terrain suits it better than migratory western honey bee operations.

Usual processing

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

Tea plantations are managed for leaf rather than flower, and flowering actually reduces leaf quality — so the honey depends on bushes being allowed to bloom after harvest rather than being pruned.

What to do with it

Its bitterness makes it an odd honey for a Western palate and a familiar one in China, where it is eaten spread and taken in water.

At the tableSpreadingIn hot drinksDesserts

Pairings

• Green teaClassic

  The honey and the drink are literally the same plant.

• Plain steamed buns

  A mild base for a honey with a bitter edge.

• Fresh soy products and tofu desserts

  Both restrained; the bitterness reads as savoury.

History and traditional use

Tea has been cultivated in China for millennia, and the honey is an incidental product of allowing a leaf crop to flower — which for most of that history was simply what happened at the end of the season.