Taken over the 4th of July Weekend 2011 in the beautiful San Luis Valley, Colorado.

One of the most common conversations we have with people who visit us at the farmer’s market is about the fact that not all honey is the same. It’s remarkable how many times after having tasted our honeys I hear the phrase: ”I didn’t know there were so many different kinds of honey!”

We feel that honey is often misunderstood and underestimated as an artisan ingredient in food.

In fact, there are more than 300 unique types of honey available in the United States (more than any other country in the world!), each originating from different floral source. And that number doesn’t include honeys that have a blend of floral sources, but have a distinct flavor profile based on the location of the hive (ex: downtown Denver).

To explain the variations of honey flavors I like to make the analogy to wine.

For wines, it’s all about the grapes. And the grapes used to make wine could take on different characteristics depending upon the French concept called gout de terroir, or “taste of place”. Terroir is what dictates the taste of the wine – and it depends on the geographic location, soil, the weather (was is a drought year?) – all of which gives each wine its unique, individual, complicated profile and personality.

The same is true for honey. A honey’s flavor profile will vary not only from year to year but also from hive to hive. The exact same field of flowers, if produced by two different hives that stand right next to each other, can bear honey that is completely different in color, flavor, texture, and aroma.

As long the beekeeper doesn’t mix all of the honeys together (and then heat/filter/process them), and instead uses traditional methods emphasizing quality and character (instead of quantity and homogeneity) – the complex regional variations come through in taste!

All Grampa’s Gourmet honeys have distinct “terroir”. It’s the flavors of the San Luis Valley in a jar. This region is an amazing place to practice traditional migratory beekeeping to produce varietal honeys because we have access to vast fields of very distinct floral sources to place our hives around.

"Our Taste of Place" San Luis Valley (picture via Gareth Llewellin, 2010)

Some pictures of this year’s honey harvest in the San Luis Valley.

Brent Edelen harvesting Honey, San Luis Valley, CO, 2010

Harvesting Honey, San Luis Valley, CO, September 2010

Harvesting Honey, San Luis Valley, CO, September 2010

Brent Edelen harvesting honey, San Luis Valley, CO, September 2010

Today Grampa’s Gourmet Honey was featured on the Edible Front Range Magazine’s blog!

We’ve been covered in the media before, but this is really the first article we’ve seen that truly captures what we are all about!

We had a visitor from the Edible Front Range Magazine Blog!

It was great having Kat Ethington and her husband visit us in Alamosa. We walked her through the end-to-end process of honey making: starting with a exciting visit (people did get stung!) to some of our honey hives where we picked up a few frames of honey. We then went back to the honey house and extracted the honey and sent everyone home with a jar of fresh, raw Colorado Clover honey!

Kat, who is a freelance photographer, also posted even more photos from the trip on her own photoblog.

Here are a couple of them:

Lots of pictures were taken that day...

Brent, explaining how bees cap honey.

Worked bees today and actually remembered the camera. These are some bees on non-gmo Canola in the valley. If they make enough we will have a lot Canola Honey for sale including some comb. Thought the pictures came out pretty good.

Bees working a Canola field in the valley

Bees working a Canola field in the valley

Clover Honey

Clover is one of the mildest honeys we produce. Our Clover Honey comes from yellow and white sweet clover found in the high altitude of the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico.

Unlike our other honeys, we are able to produce clover honey fairly consistently, although some color variation is normal from year to year.

Tamarisk Honey

Tamarisk, also know as Salt Cedar is a pine like tree that grows all along the Rio Grande river from Northern New Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico. The tree has gained a reputation as a large water user and New Mexico currently has a program  to try to eradicate this tree through removal. As a result, we have been making less and less honey every year. This is my favorite honey; it is the Irish Stout of the honey world, dark, strong and very unusual. If you are a fan of buckwheat or Tupelo honey this is right up your alley!

White Honey

White Honey (sometimes called whipped, spun, or creamed) is honey that is naturally granulated under controlled circumstances. We use Mesquite honey to start the process and give it a nice smooth consistency. This white honey will stay soft in the jar forever and won’t run off of your toast! Keep it in a cool place, as if you warm it it will turn into regular liquid honey.

“Seasonal” New Mexico Wild Flower Honey

We call this honey “Seasonal” because it is produced in very limited quantities, and it has the most variation in terms of pollen source. This honey is from around Rodeo, NM where the bees freely roam the beautiful desert and have their choice of wild flowers (cactus flowers, star-thistle, etc).