One of her favorite imports is Happy Honey,
a raw honey from Serbia that is pollinated
from sunflowers.
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. The honey is available
for collecting only for a few days each summer.
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.”
But honey’s popularity goes beyond food. It
has been touted for various health and beauty
benefits too over the years. Manuka honey is
particularly popular and pricey these days. It
is pollinated from the manuka bush or tree
in New Zealand, which flowers for only six to
eight weeks a year. There are different grades of
manuka honey, including ones intended to be
used as food and others for medicinal purposes.
Kyle Barnholt, an executive at the honey
company Manuka Health says exports of New