Heather Honey

A finest selection of regional heather honeys harvested across Spain.

Summary: Heather honey is a dark honey with a powerful and delicious taste. Moreover, it is rich in minerals and other compunds that are very healthy. Furthermore, all our heather honeys come from local beekeepers that follow sustainable and respectful beekeeping practices. Also, we offer for sale this selection of organic and no organic heather honeys in our shop in Las Rozas de Madrid.

Related articles: Unpasteurised raw honey. The 5 best honeys

1. Our raw heather honey

Firstly, we show you the most important characteristics of this honey:

a) Color:

Heather honey has a dark amber color. However, when it crystallizes it takes on a much more brown colour, with clearly reddish tones.

Photo 1: Colour range of raw heather honey.

b) Aroma

Furthermore, this raw heather honey also has a very intense and persistent aroma with a rich smoky taste. Also, it has a long-lasting on the palate with hints of bitterness. Likewise, it reminds us of the deciduous forests in autumn, humus and mushrooms. Moreover, when tasting it, one can appreciate salty notes and marked bitter components, with greater or lesser intensity.

On the other hand, if this honey is accompanied by oak mielatos, the honey will be darker. As a consequence, its aroma will be less sweet and with more marked salty notes and malted aromas. However, this depends on the type of heather and its purity.

Furthermore, you an see here a video about heather plants.

Video 1: Heather flowering

c) Crystallization

In conclusion, this honey will have more acid notes and higher humidity if it is more produced from blackberry nectar. In addition, it will tend to crystallize with separation of the solid and liquid phases.

In summary, this honey is slow to crystallize.

d) Not blended

We offer honeys from beekeeper, who are involved in all steps from harvesting to bottling the honey. Furthermore, our beekeepers do not blend their honey with other honeys.

e) The shrub

Heather is a shrub that breeds on plains, slopes, hills, rocky mountain areas. Moreover, it flowers in summer, and it can extend its flowering at the end of summer in areas of lower altitude. Therefore the new heather harvest always starts in the middle and end of summer.

Moreover, we can find heather on the plains, slopes and hills of the whole Iberian Peninsula, which is free of lime up to an altitude of 2,600 metres.

f) Flowering and Recollection

In addition, the harvest of Heather honey is variable. Because its flowering is often early and irregular. Furthermore, it is also very sensitive to long periods of drought and rain, so we can find years without this kind of honey.

Video 2: Our heather honeys from Apicola Moreno

g) Pollen

Furthermore, heather honey will contain mostly heather pollen, Erica Sp in its scientific name. However, we can also find some fabaceae, crsitaceae, blackberry and asteraceae pollen.

e) Ecological or conventional

Both conventional and organic heather honey are available for purchase. Regarding the organic one, we have checked the authenticity of every certificate by controlling them..

f) Suatainability and support rural areas

In addition, a extraordinary sweety gift from bees and nature.

Most importantly, we want to point out that all our beekeepers are caring the bees and they use only sustainable and respectful beekeeping practices. Also, beekeeping play a great rolle in rural development.

2. Benefits and properties 

Heather honey is a natural product with so many health benefits. Furthermore, these benefits are due to a high concentration in sugar and its nutrition compounds. Compounds provided by healther nectar and pollen.

Furthermopre, according to numerous sources that we have found both researchers and doctors, this honey can help with the followings problems:

• Urinary system: helps clean the urinary system and therefore reduces the chances of infection. According to numerous scientific articles, this honey helps to eliminate cystitis, a type of infection of the urinary system.
• Prostate: I haven’t found any scientific research here that certifies this. However, I have many clients who have been recommended by their doctor. They have a very positive effect.

In short, honey is a natural product that has been used for millennia for many different health uses. However, we point out that honey is not a medicine.

a) Contraindications

Honey is a very calorific product. Therefore, we recommend a moderate consumption for people seeking to lose weight. Likewise, if you suffer from diabetes, we recommend a advise of your doctor.

3. Recommendations for Heather Honey

Heather honey is a less sweet and very aromatic honey. As well, it is great to spread on toast and biscuits. Also, it is delicious for coffe and tea.

Likewise, it is great on toasts, biscuits, coffee and tea.

Finally, great chefs, due to the great consistency of this honey, recommend it to give a very special touch to ice creams and sponge cakes. It is also ideal for pairing with citrus fruits, cheese and in the preparation of fish dishes. Furthermore, it is also ideal to combine with spicy and hot dishes.

4. Indications

Raw heather honey can take a long time to crystallize, because this honey has a lower glucose content and it is rich in minerals, two factors that delay  crystallization. However, its crystallization can be influenced by the content of other nectars and myelates.

a) Useful life

We define useful life as recommended consumption. As a result, this honey may eventually lose some of its qualities and contain more than 40 mg/kg of MHF.

Its useful life is 2 years from the moment of packaging.

b) Destination population

Moreover, this honey is adequate for all. But we recommen not to feeding honey children under two years old, only with medical advise.

5. Origin

Our heather honey is produced bylocal spanish beekeepers, who are the followings:

Table 1: Description of our beekeepers

We know these beekeepers well. Furthermore, we have visited their facilities, their beehives and extraction sites. Also, all these beekeeppers are involved in all steps from harvesting to bottling the honey.  Consequently, we can make sure that we only offer high-quality honey.

a) Other origins

Moreover, heather honey is produced in most European countries. However, the varieties of heather are different in Spain. Also, countries such as Norway, and the north of the United Kingdom, exactly, have high production of heather honey. Consequently, in European countries it is easy to find this honey in supermarkets such as: Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda, Waitrose, M&S, Holland and Barret.

6. History

Discórides also deals with this plant in chapter 97 of his book I and here he already indicated the importance of the honey produced by the bees of this bush. Later, in the 25th century, pharmacists such as Mattioli and Laguna already spoke of the benefits of heather in urinary treatment.

7. FAQ

In addition, these are the most frequent asked questions:

• How strong is heather honey?

Heather honey is a no very sweet honey, because it has a lot of minerals that reduce its sweetness.

• Is heather honey good for the prostate?

This information should be given also to you by your doctor. It is true, however, that many clients tell me that they take heather honey for their prostate and it is very good for them.

• What other honeys are similar?

Heather honey will also be present in honeys such as mountain, forest and thousand-flower honeys.

8. More information

Finally, we show you the physical-chemical parameters that any heather honey must pass.

Table 2: Directive 110/2001 EC, RD 1049/2003 in Spain.

In short, a strong Spanish honey with great healthy properties. Therefore, a honey that is always worth having at home.

Source:

Heather

“Finally, for many it is the best honey you’ve ever tasted”.