New Zealand Honey tasting!

You may have been wine tasting, beer tasting or even cheese tasting…but have you ever been Honey tasting? Here we at Pacific Resources, shoppri.com, are going to try and take you on a virtual New Zealand honey tasting journey to help you discover New Zealand’s diverse and unique honey flavors that are available to you without the expensive plane ticket!

Let’s start with the well known New Zealand Clover honey to get a base for honey tasting……then follow us on the journey tasting New Zealand’s one of a kind Rewarea, Tawari and Blue Borge honeys!

New Zealand Clover Honey is a common perennial pasture plant with a light, pale gold colored honey. It has a herbal, dry grass aroma and a clean, mild, sweet delicate flavor. A traditional favorite in a hot lemon and honey drink.

Rewarewa or Knightia excelsa, is a native of New Zealand. This forest tree is found from the lowlands to the mountains and is often referred to as New Zealand’s honeysuckle. The honey has the most beautiful amber to red colour with an intense herbaceous, geranium/dandelion aroma. Its flavor is described as clean, sweet, smoky and malt-like.

New Zealand’s very sweet, golden Tawari Honey comes from the creamy white flowers of New Zealand’s Tawari tree. These richly perfumed flowers produced in late spring, attract the honey-bee. Today the majestic evergreen Tawari tree is rare in the unspoiled New Zealand native forests. Its aroma has a rich perfumed musk/incense/sandalwood, orange peel, licorice. Its clean, musty, rose-hip syrup, very sweet golden syrup taste brings you back for more.

Blue Borage comes from the tall blue wildflowers of Vipers Bugloss (echium vulgare) that cover the New Zealand’s mountainsides and river valley flats of this ruggedly beautiful Southern island. “Blue Borage” is a local common name given by high country musterers to Vipers Bugloss. When the plant begins to head up it resembles a coiled viper ready to strike and this may be responsible for its European name.The honey color is light pinkish brown with an initial floral bouquet finished with a dusty rose oil characteristic. Clean tasting, mildly herbal with lemon and floral characteristics and is not invasive when used in a variety of culinary ways. It is an excellent sweetener in tea, herbal teas, coffee etc. Moisture content tends to be a little lower than most other honeys being around 15-16%. This gives the honey a chewy texture. Another characteristic to the honey is slow granulation. This enables the honey to stay liquid for longer.

We hope you enjoyed our virtual Honey tasting tour..try one of these amazing New Zealand honeys for yourself!!