Corsica honey

How honey is produced here

Miel de Corse — Mele di Corsica holds an AOP that recognises six seasonal types from spring maquis through chestnut grove to autumn maquis, all from the same landscape at different points in the year. The classification is by season and altitude rather than by single species, which is unusual and honest.

Flavour signature

The flavour families that recur across this origin’s honeys, counted from their sensory profiles rather than asserted.

• Phenolic and medicinal · 3
• Woody · 3
• Resinous · 2
• Floral · 2
• Smoky · 2
• Vegetal · 2

Honeys from Corsica

• Corsican maquis honeyExtra light amber · PronouncedRanges from delicate and floral in spring to intensely bitter and resinous in the autumn maquis, which is dominated by strawberry tree and is among the most challenging honeys in Europe.
• Chestnut honeyAmber · IntenseAromatic, woody and unmistakably bitter — sweetness first, tannin second, and a long dry finish.
• Strawberry tree honeyAmber · IntenseAggressively bitter — coffee grounds, artichoke and burnt sugar, with the sweetness arriving late and briefly. Nothing in food prepares most people for it.
• Asphodel honeyWater white · DelicateDelicate and softly perfumed with a fresh, almost vegetal lift and a silky weight that gives it more presence than the flavour alone would.
• Tree heath honeyAmber · IntenseStrong, malty and slightly bitter, with a burnt-caramel depth and a woody finish — assertive in a way that divides opinion sharply.

Plants behind these honeys

• Strawberry treeArbutus unedoValuable out of all proportion to its abundance, because of when it flowers. Late nectar lets colonies enter winter with fresh stores in a landscape that has otherwise shut down.
• HeatherCalluna vulgaris
• Sweet chestnutCastanea sativaAn exceptional pollen source — the catkins shed enormous quantities — and a good nectar source in the right weather. The pollen arrives at a useful moment for colonies building towards late summer.
• AsphodelAsphodelus ramosusA major early nectar source in country that offers little else at that season, and rated highly for pollen as well.
• RockroseCistus ladaniferAn outstanding pollen source and a good nectar one, and a plant that also supplies resin for propolis — an unusual triple contribution.
• Bell heatherErica cinereaA good nectar source and moderate for pollen, over a long summer season on ground with few alternatives.

Bees associated with this origin

• Western honey beeApis melliferaThe bee behind essentially all the world's honey, and the one most people mean when they say 'bee'. Apis mellifera is a perennial eusocial insect that overwinters as a living cluster rather than dying back each year — which is the whole reason it stores honey in quantity, and therefore the reason it was ever domesticated. It is native to Europe, Africa and western Asia and has been carried by people to every continent except Antarctica.
• BumblebeesBombusLarge, furry, loud, and cold-tolerant in a way no honey bee is. Bumblebees run annual colonies: a mated queen emerges alone in spring, founds a nest by herself, raises workers through the summer, produces new queens and males in late season, and then the entire colony dies except those new queens. They do make honey, in the strict sense of ripened nectar stores — just a few days' worth, because they have no winter to survive as a colony.
• Iberian honey beeApis mellifera iberiensisThe honey bee of Spain and Portugal, and one of the more genetically interesting subspecies in Europe — it carries ancestry from both the western European dark bee lineage and the African lineage across the Strait of Gibraltar, in a gradient running from north to south. It is defensive, frugal, prone to swarming, and superbly adapted to a landscape of long dry summers.

Honey in Corsica

Corsican beekeeping works the endemic Corsican bee, a distinct population of Apis mellifera adapted to the island's compressed altitudinal range, and the AOP requires it.

Deciding between two of them

• Chestnut vs strawberry tree honey — The two great bitter honeys of Europe. One is widely available and a good introduction; the other is the most bitter honey in production and divides people completely.