Superb Sunflower Honey from Italy
The magical honeys of Miele Thun
In the final weeks of fall 2011, Michael Dickman (who will lead an already nearly sold-out two-hour poetry workshop at the Roadhouse on October 14) published a lovely poem in The New Yorker entitled “My Honeybee.” About halfway through the poem’s 40 or so lines, he writes about imagining “My mouth full of strange sunlight.” I think I’ll send Michael a jar of this exceptional honey as a gift for Rosh Hashanah—it’s his poetic dream come true in a terrific jar of sunflower honey from central Italy.
This time of year, in many Jewish households, people start preparing to serve apples and honey at their Rosh Hashanah celebration. When I grew up, that meant boring supermarket apples and the pasteurized, overprocessed honey in the plastic bears. If I were going to do it today, it would be a whole different world of flavor. There are probably going to be about 18 different heirloom apples out for sale at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market this Saturday. And the Deli stocks just as many amazingly flavorful monofloral honeys. Each is made when the bees are feeding on the flowers of one particular blossom that’s open for a period of weeks in a particular area. Each of the honeys has its own unique flavor, aroma, and color. This terrific Sunflower Honey from Miele Thun is one of my favorites!
Four years ago, Andrea Paternoster, the remarkable founder of Miele Thun (“the honeys of Thun” in English), was tragically killed in an automobile accident. The Italian culinary journal Gambero Rosso remembered him as “the innovative beekeeper who revolutionized the honey sector in Italy.” I met Andrea years ago during a visit to the Alto Adige region in northern Italy. The beauty, complexity, variety, and sheer deliciousness of the honeys he and his team created are extraordinary. For most of the world’s consumers, they’re almost certain to spark curiosity. If you’ve never tasted a monofloral, traditionally harvested honey, you may well find yourself as entranced as I am by this amazing food—delicious, complex, and endlessly fascinating.
The Sunflower Honey from Miele Thun has been on my mind and on my counter of late for a couple of reasons. The sunflower is the national symbol of Ukraine, and our amazing artist Ian Nagy’s beyond beautiful scratchboard drawing of one is on the cover of the dignity pamphlet I taught out of last Wednesday morning when Jack Stack asked me his curious question. And secondly, because it tastes—and smells—so incredibly good.
The team at Miele Thun says of the current harvest of the Sunflower Honey,
A delicate aroma of pollen, freshly cut hay, pineapple and passion fruit. The taste is fruited and intense, with distinct acid notes and aromas of ripe apricots against a background of mace. Its pollen is covered by tiny droplets of yellow oil, to which the honey owes its brilliant color.
Brilliant is indeed a good way to describe the color—when you open the jar, it looks like someone snatched a small bit of the sun out of the sky and squeezed it tightly into the bottle. The Sunflower Honey comes from the central provinces of Italy—Tuscany, Umbria, the Marche, Lazio, and the Abruzzo. You can use the honey with apples for Rosh Hashanah. Spread it on buttered toast or blend it with the Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter to make an incredible honey butter. Add it to a vinaigrette. Spoon it atop some of the Creamery’s handmade Cream Cheese and serve the two in tandem for an hors d’oeuvre!
Andrea Paternoster worked hard to change the beliefs (bee-liefs?) of anyone who would listen to him talk about honey. He was determined to spread the good word, and he charged everyone he spoke with to take up the cause. “Please,” he would say, “become ambassadors of this message.” His whole approach was based on wonder and curiosity. Andrea would say, “At the end of each tasting, I always leave an empty glass representing next year’s honey. Because, for me, honey is discovery.”
Curious? Come by the Deli and ask for a taste? Or let us ship some your way! The Miele Thun honeys aren’t on the Zingermans.com Mail Order site, but we can happily ship them.
