GREEK HONEY

The quality of Greek honey remains as stunning today as it has been throughout time. With good reason: Greece’s countryside continues to yield an unrivaled variety of vegetation with the attendant pollens. Most of the plants from which Greek bees gather pollen are wild and sun-baked until they reach their peak flavor and essence. In most other honey-producing countries, bees depend on cultivated monocultures.

In the incredibly rich and varied Greek flora, there are at least 120 different flowering plants and trees that provide fodder for Greek bees, and theoretically just as many different types of honey, of which only a handful are commercially viable. Among them: dark, thick, pine and fir honey, orange-blossom and flower-blossom honey, heather, and the best known of all, thyme honey. Thyme honey is unique to Greece although more than 60% of Greek honey comes from pine. Almost all Greek honey, around 80%, is produced by bees that forage off wild, not cultivated, plants.