We tasted it on a quiet morning between batches — a small jar of honey so dark we thought, at first glance, the seal might have broken and something inside had gone wrong. It was nearly black. Held to the window, it caught only the deepest red of the light.
It was chestnut honey. A monofloral, meaning the bees had foraged almost exclusively on the blossoms of a single tree — in this case the European sweet chestnut. One of our sous chefs and I each took a spoon. We stood at the counter and didn’t say anything for a long moment. Woody. Smoky. A little leathery. Mildly bitter in the way a strong tea is bitter, or a good red wine. “Wild,” he said finally. That was the right word. Underneath the bitterness, a slow warmth of caramel and molasses, something rooted and old.
It was so far from the honey of my childhood — the clover and orange blossom honeys we drizzled on biscuits without much thought, those bright, candy-clean sweetnesses we grew up calling honey. This was a different country entirely. A honey that didn’t apologize for being more complicated than sweet.
We’re formulating a cut ganache bonbon around it now, tasting and re-tasting in small batches. What keeps surprising me is how naturally it leans toward Texas Hill Country wine — the Tempranillos and Mourvèdres growing twenty minutes from our kitchen carry the same woody, almost mineral seriousness. Two strong things, raised in soil that asked something of them. The match isn’t an accident; it’s a recognition.
This is the part of the work I love most. You travel — even if it’s only as far as a small jar on the counter — and you let something new in. And sometimes, on the other side of the world, you find a flavor that turns around and points right back at home.
