I am learning about the taste of various honeys, including how professionals advise we practice tasting the honey in the jars we buy. First, they suggest we check the label to see if we’re buying a local artisanal honey instead of  a commercial, mass-produced honey blended together from any number of different hives in the U.S. as well as China, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and other countries. Granted, it’s all honey, but blended honeys lose the taste and smell of specific flowers, whereas local honey captures the flavors of the nectar in the flowers within one-and-a-half miles of the bee’s hive, enabling a distinctly recognizable taste. 

Not unlike wine, professional honey tasters advise we first open a jar and inhale the perfume of the honey, then drop a bit on your tongue, then swirl it around your mouth reaching the roof of the mouth, the cheeks and across the tongue.  Cleanse your mouth with water then repeat the test several more times, thinking of the flavors you are tasting — cinnamon, black cherry, clover, grass, and others. Try to find words to describe the flavor.

Local, artisanal honey really is different. Do me a favor. Buy a jar of Buzz Savories Artisanal Honey and do a honey tasting of your own. I taste clover and a hint of cinnamon, but I would be fascinated the learn the flavors that you identify.