Sustainable, versatile, global, delicious: Honey’s got buzz

Honey isn’t just honey anymore. At farmers markets, grocery stores and restaurants, there’s a wide assortment of honeys in various colors and tastes, from faraway places and ones next door.

Why is a food that’s been part of the human diet for millennia suddenly so trendy?

First, of course, honey is delicious and versatile. It can be used in baking, dressings, marinades, sauces, cocktails — in all sorts of dishes both savory and sweet.

Honey is produced all over the world, so as we explore new cuisines, we’re seeing the many ways honey can be utilized.

Increased awareness of the importance of bees and pollination also has a lot to do with why people are seeking out honey, says Lori Jean Levy, CEO and owner of My Global Table, an importer of specialty goods. Bee populations have plummeted, she notes, threatening the food supply.

“This makes it a true current events issue,” she says. Honey is a sustainable and eco-friendly product at a time when many consumers are making that a priority.

Elyse Hohnerlein, operations coordinator for Savannah Bee Honey, in Savannah, Georgia, notes that honey producers support “both the beekeepers and the bees.”

A preference for local food has also boosted the popularity of honey, says Hohnerlein. She says there are more than 300 types of honey in the United States alone, and Savannah Bee bottles 15 different types of liquid honey from around the world.

She explains that raw, artisanal honey is often monofloral (from one pollen source) and is labeled with that plant name, such as sourwood, lavender or orange blossom. Honey takes on some of the flavor of its pollen source.

Levy says that unlike processed honey, raw honey “is neither heated or filtered.” Those processes, she says, removes much of raw honey’s nutritional punch.

Maria Loi, chef and owners of Loi Estiatorio in New York City, started her own line of organic honey.

“Thankfully, people are going back to nature,” says

Loi, and are interested in where their food comes from. She packages two kinds of honey from Greece, one of them a Wild Forest Black Honey that comes from the mountains near Delphi. Loi says she harvested honey there with her grandfather as a child.

Raw honey is a nuanced food, comparable to wine in the way it can be tasted and considered. And because it is a product of nature, it is always changing. Dara Bliss Davenport, a chef and partner at Loi Brand, notes that the color can vary from bottle to bottle even for honey from the same hive. The language she uses to describe the flavor of Loi’s black honey is similar to the way oenophiles talk about wine: “not as sweet, with notes of burnt caramel, and a pronounced molasses flavor with a citrus finish.”

Finally, honey is beautiful. It ranges from a pale golden color to a deep almost-black.

That feeds into the graze board craze. Graze boards are large boards or platters carrying cheeses, charcuterie, and other nibbles, and honey is often a companion to these items and part of the presentation.

KATIE WORKMAN/AP A wide assortment of raw and processed honeys have sprung up in the U.S.