Three honeys, none of them ordinary

Acacia honey with Espelette pepper, yuzu honey and chestnut honey: one warm, one sharp and citrus, one dark and tannic. Nobody arrives at these three by accident, which is the point of a collection. Corsican canistrelli and a PDO fig jam to eat them with.

Why single-origin honey tastes different

Most honey on a supermarket shelf is blended from several countries and filtered until it tastes of very little except sweetness. Hedene work the other way: they buy from named beekeepers, keep each hive’s harvest separate, and bottle it unblended. That is why the chestnut is dark and tannic with a bitter edge, the lavender is soft and almost creamy, and the yuzu is sharp enough to use on cheese rather than toast. Put two of them side by side on a spoon and the difference is not subtle.

Who makes it

Hedene is a small French house that works only with beekeepers it names, across France and further afield for the varieties that cannot be had here. The honey is raw, unblended and bottled in small runs, which is why a jar tastes of a place and a season rather than of a brand. The biscuits and the fig jam are from Charles Antona, who have been making them in Corsica since 1962 from fruit grown on the island, under the PDO mark that ties them to that ground. We import both ourselves rather than buying through a wholesaler. You can read how the protected designations work at the European Commission.

Packing and delivery

We pack this by hand in Worcestershire in a matte-black gift box with a printed ivory-cream sleeve, on the day it leaves us, every jar wrapped so nothing moves in transit. We deliver across mainland UK and can send it straight to the recipient with a handwritten card and no prices anywhere in the parcel. Honey keeps almost indefinitely and needs no refrigerating, so this is a safe gift to send to an office or to someone who may not be in when it arrives. See the rest of the range on our French hampers page.

How to serve it

Taste them the way you would taste wine: a little of the palest first, the darkest last, on a teaspoon and nothing else. After that, the floral honeys belong on toast, in yoghurt or stirred into tea, and the darker ones are better with something savoury – chestnut honey over a hard sheep’s cheese is the classic pairing, and a sharp citrus honey does the same job. Spoon any of them over the canistrelli. If a jar crystallises, stand it in warm water for ten minutes; do not microwave it, which cooks off the aromatics you paid for.