Honey Connoisseur

Like wine, cheese, coffee, and chocolate, honey has emerged as a culinary obsession. Its popularity at farmers markets and specialty food stores has soared as beekeepers and retailers are capitalizing on the trend. The Honey Connoisseur teaches everything you need to know about how to taste, select, and use an assortment of honeys.

Honey and beekeeping experts C. Marina Marchese and Kim Flottum explain how bees make honey and introduce the concept of terroir, the notion that soil, water, wind, climate, and the wide range of nectar sources can affect the taste of honey. As with wine, the terroir of a honey directly influences its character and flavor profile. The Honey Connoisseur gives a thorough course in the origins and flavors of more than 30 different honey varietals, as well as step by step instructions on how to taste honey, describe its flavors and determine what other culinary flavors pair best with a particular honey. Some heavenly combinations include linden honey and crispy, green melon, tulip poplar honey and sour red cherries, tamarisk honey and crispy bacon, or avocado honey and vanilla ice cream. The authors also provide a few basic recipes that use varietal honey such as Tomato, Peach, Basil and Summer Honey Salad or Honey Struck Chocolate Truffles.

Beautifully illustrated, it's the perfect book for food lovers, beekeepers, and locavores alike.

Carla Marina Marchese is the international best selling author of The World Atlas of Honey, Honey for Dummies and Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper. She is an accredited instructor for the Italian National Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey, where she received her formal training as a honey sensory expert. In 2013, she established The American Honey Tasting Society (AHTS) an educational organization that teaches the Italian methods of sensory analysis of honey. Marchese has appeared on many TV shows like PBS - Weekends with Yankee, ABC-TV The Chew, Dr. Oz, Vice TV and Discovery TV Moonshiners. She has written for Bee Culture magazine and The Guardian. She is the founder of the brand Red Bee Honey. Visit her website honeysommelier.com and follow her on social media @honeysommelier.