Organic Acacia Honey Raw & Unheated

WHERE IT BELONGS

TEA. This is the one. A dark honey fights the leaf; acacia disappears into it.

Curd, yoghurt, fruit, a light dessert.

Anywhere you want sweetness without the honey announcing itself.

HEAT

Stir it into a WARM drink, not a boiling one. Let the cup stand a minute first.

High heat drives off the aroma and degrades the enzymes, which is what you paid for.

STORAGE

Room temperature, lid closed, out of the sun. NOT the fridge - cold encourages setting.

DRY SPOON, every time. Water is the only thing that can spoil honey: it is what lets yeast get going.

It does not expire. It will slowly darken and lose aroma over years, which is fair.

IF IT EVER DOES SET

It has not gone off. Stand the jar in warm water - not hot - and it returns.

With this honey you will probably never need to.

NEVER GIVE HONEY TO A BABY UNDER ONE YEAR OLD

Not a spoonful, not a taste, not on the tongue at birth, not on a dummy.

HONEY CAN CONTAIN CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM SPORES. They are harmless to adults and older children, whose gut flora handle them. AN INFANT'S GUT CANNOT, and the spores can germinate and produce toxin. This is infant botulism and it is serious.

This has nothing to do with quality or purity. IT IS TRUE OF ALL HONEY, everywhere, including the best honey in the world.

It stays liquid, and we will explain why rather than let you wonder. Acacia is naturally low in glucose and glucose is the sugar that crystallises. It pours for years without anyone heating it. For most honey, runny is a warning. For this one it is the variety.

Raw, and we intend to prove it with a number rather than an adjective.

The palest, mildest honey there is - the one to use when you want sweetness without everything tasting of honey. In tea especially.

Wild forage from forest beekeeping, which is a more precise claim than "organic". Bees fly three to five kilometres and nobody controls where they go; what you can control is where the hives are and what the bees are not fed.

And we will tell you the thing that matters more than any of it: NEVER GIVE HONEY TO A BABY UNDER ONE YEAR OLD. Not ours, not anyone's.

"Organic honey" deserves an honest paragraph, so here it is.

A BEE FORAGES OVER THREE TO FIVE KILOMETRES AND TAKES INSTRUCTIONS FROM NOBODY. To certify honey organic in the way you certify a field organic, you would have to certify everything within that radius - every crop, every roadside, every garden. In most of India that is not possible, which is why a great many "organic honey" claims are really claims about how the hive is managed rather than where the bees went.

WHAT WE CAN ACTUALLY TELL YOU IS BETTER AND MORE SPECIFIC.

WHERE THE HIVES SIT. Forest, away from sprayed crop. That is the real version of the organic claim and it is a stronger one.

WHAT THE BEES ARE NOT FED. Feeding colonies sugar syrup is the most respectable-looking route to adulterated honey there is. A flat "we do not" is worth more than a certificate.

HOW IT IS FILTERED. Coarse-strained, pollen intact.

WHETHER IT IS HEATED. It is not, and the HMF number will say so.