By Ian Mackley
About 30 members spent a congenial couple of hours tasting honey at the 2024 December social. This was a repeat of the successful 2023 event and was again good fun. Thanks to the generosity of Member donors, we were able to taste 36 different honeys, four of them blind, from Europe, North Africa, SE Asia and Australasia. There were a lot of happy people leaving the event but that of course could have been a sugar high!
We asked tasters to rate the honeys on a sliding scale between ‘Vile’ and ‘Ambrosia of the Gods’. Ranking tables were produced in three ways: by average score, by number and also percentage of either ‘ambrosia’ or ‘vile’ ratings.
- The top four honeys regardless of ranking method were, roughly in descending order: Aberdeenshire heather blend, two Aberdeenshire blossom honeys (respectively fourth and second in the Honey Show), and ling heather honey from the Association bees. French lavender, NZ Manuka and Croatian heather each made a single appearance depending on the method.
- The most disliked honeys regardless of method were Sumatran honey from ‘apis trigona’ and French sweet chestnut. Aldi 75p also appeared in all the bottom five regardless of method, and Aldi £3 organic acacia appeared in two methods. Curiously given that it appeared in one version of the top five honeys, NZ Manuka also appeared in one version of the bottom five honeys!
Here’s the full table ordered on average rating alone:
| Floral Source | Country | No. of ‘vile’ ratings | No. of ‘Ambrosia of the Gods’ ratings | Total no. of ratings | Average rating (max. 5) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Mystery 4) Aberdeenshire heather blend | Aberdeenshire | 15 | 21 | 4.71 | |
| Summer blossom (lime?) Honey Show ’24 liquid light fourth place | Aberdeenshire | 10 | 20 | 4.50 | |
| Lavender | France | 4 | 21 | 4.14 | |
| (Mystery 1) Honey Show ’24 liquid light second place | Aberdeenshire | 7 | 24 | 4.08 | |
| Association ling heather honey | Aberdeenshire | 1 | 5 | 19 | 4.05 |
| Ling | Denmark | 4 | 16 | 3.81 | |
| Wildflower, thyme and conifers | Greece | 2 | 16 | 3.69 | |
| Heather blend | Aberdeenshire | 1 | 11 | 3.64 | |
| Lime | Poland | 1 | 17 | 3.59 | |
| Blackberry | France | 1 | 4 | 22 | 3.55 |
| OSR | Aberdeenshire | 14 | 3.43 | ||
| Lavender | Tasmania | 2 | 17 | 3.41 | |
| Heather | Croatia | 4 | 15 | 3.40 | |
| Orange blossom | Spain (Malaga region) | 1 | 18 | 3.39 | |
| 1000 Flowers | Spain (Malaga region) | 1 | 13 | 3.38 | |
| Mountain honey | Mallorca | 1 | 12 | 3.33 | |
| Forest | Spain (Malaga region) | 2 | 3 | 16 | 3.31 |
| Pine | Germany | 17 | 3.29 | ||
| Orange blossom | Morocco | 1 | 15 | 3.20 | |
| Acacia | France | 15 | 3.20 | ||
| Meadow | France | 17 | 3.18 | ||
| Bell heather | Aberdeenshire | 2 | 5 | 24 | 3.13 |
| Honeydew | Poland | 17 | 3.06 | ||
| Eucalyptus | Mallorca | 1 | 16 | 3.00 | |
| Unknown | France | 1 | 1 | 13 | 3.00 |
| Geven (Milk Vetch) | Turkey | 1 | 14 | 2.86 | |
| Phacelia | ? | 1 | 16 | 2.75 | |
| Unknown | Denmark (Copenhagen) | 1 | 14 | 2.71 | |
| (Mystery 3) Manuka | NZ | 12 | 6 | 31 | 2.68 |
| Unknown | Vietnam | 15 | 2.60 | ||
| Javanese forest | Indonesia | 5 | 16 | 2.38 | |
| Floral | Sumatra | 3 | 13 | 2.31 | |
| (Mystery 2) Aldi 75p | Aldi | 12 | 1 | 27 | 2.22 |
| Acacia (organic) | Aldi | 4 | 1 | 11 | 2.09 |
| From ‘trigona’ bees | Sumatra | 12 | 18 | 1.67 | |
| Sweet Chestnut | France | 17 | 2 | 23 | 1.52 |
What we learned about common beliefs about honey and the variety of people’s palates and preferences was again very interesting.
- It came across even more clearly this year that we seem to rate our own local honeys very highly. Is this familiarity, subconscious bias or something else? But we rate local honeys highly even when tasted blind, albeit that some have been prize-winning show honeys that one would hope would be highly rated.
- The cheap supermarket ‘probably not entirely honey’ honeys bear no comparison with more artisanal products and were poorly rated; the Aldi organic acacia rated poorly (2.09) against a locally bought French acacia honey (3.20) and both Aldi’s 75p honey and £3 organic Acacia were very near the bottom of the ratings table. ‘Organic’ does not imply ‘tastes better’!
- Whilst some honeys attracted tightly consistent rating and comment, views sometimes varied widely, illustrating the differences in people’s palates. Manuka is the outstanding example. On average its rating was well down the table, suggesting that on the whole it is disliked but that conceals quite a lot of ‘ambrosia’ ratings. In fact nine honeys got both at least one vile and one ambrosia rating. Even the ‘worst in show’, the almost universally disliked French sweet chestnut honey with 17 ‘vile’ ratings attracted two ‘ambrosia’ ratings and apparently a few people liked the generally wince-inducing Sumatran trigona honey.
- Honeys of the same floral source but from different countries were broadly in the same parts of the tables but French lavender was preferred to Tasmanian lavender and Spanish orange blossom preferred to the Moroccan equivalent.
- In comparison with 2023, this year’s Aldi 75p (av. 2.22) was rated marginally worse than 2023’s Tesco 75p (2.50). Moroccan orange blossom was almost identically rated (3.20 vs 3.24), but the same jar of Javanese Forest was near the top in 2023 (3.67) but near the bottom in 2024 (2.38). One assumes it has probably gone off in some way.