04.03.08
product review: glenburn honey
posted by Regena Rafelson | 11 comments
Honey is nectar of the gods. Why is it that within seconds of opening a jar, every doorknob in your house has a dab of honey on it, and there is an unexplainable sticky spot behind your right elbow? Magical stuff. Over the years, I have had wildflower honey, fruit blossom honey, and fire weed honey. Honey from chestnut blossoms or buckwheat could be found in my pantry at one time or another. In between, there was a jar of clover - good old reliable clover. For half of the seventies, I labored under the notion that honey was Good For You, and I used honey instead of sugar in all the jams, canned fruit, and pickles - scores of jars - I “put up” each harvest season. Honey replaced sugar in all baking.
Honey was purchased in five gallon tins. Then came the Reality Check of the Eighties where I learned that while honey may have nutritional value not found in refined sugar, one’s pancreas sees honey as, well, sugar. And the pancreas has to do the same work to render a tablespoon of honey as a tablespoon of C & H pure cane sugar. This was a painful loss of innocence for me. More painful than Santa Claus and Alice Cooper, combined. After months of grieving, I accepted that I would use sugar where sugar tastes best and honey where honey tastes best. Tough decisions.
Nevertheless, I am a sucker for any exotic honey out there. The honey referenced above, fire weed, may or may not be from the forest wildflower called Fire weed - named both for the color of the blossom and because it is often the first plant to grow and thrive after a forest fire. The honey was very dark brown and viscous, with an after-burn that scalded one’s tonsils, causing nose and eyes to run. Bronchial passages went into spasm. Those bees were getting nectar from habanero peppers? The chestnut honey, another impulse purchase, was everything expected of honey, but not memorable.
I was delighted that Sandy brought me a jar of honey from Glenburn Tea Estate in Darjeeling, India. Glenburn’s honey is made from tea blossoms. That’s right: tea blossoms. It is light amber in color and very light, a consistency more like syrup than honey. The flavor is subtle, but distinct. There is no cloying sweetness. It is excellent on toast, granola, yogurt, and with peanut butter. It is great by the teaspoon, right out of the jar. If I were going to put a dollop of honey in my tea, it would be Glenburn honey.
Main Image :: Image 1
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:15 am
Apart honey, tea blossoms are used for making cosmetics. And if every estate or plantation can utilize the flowers so produced by tea bushes, which so far have been falling down to earth to get recycled into the green matter again, then all the misries of the beleagured tea industry can be taken care of.
Rajiv Lochan
http://www.doketea.com
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
Regena,
While I haven’t tried the tea blossom honey I do have some tea blossom TEA. That’s right it seems as if in China in the areas where puehr is one of the mainstays of the agricultural economy the tea growers harvest the blossoms an make a form of puehr tea from it. I’ve been lucky enough to have tried two very differently produced forms of this tea, one in compressed typical puehr disc form called a beng which was one of my direct from China purchases. The other was a small sample gift from my local tea vendor in Cincinnati who just happened to have some and asked if I’d like to take some home to try. This second one was not compressed and I don’t think it was aged but seemed more for lack of a better description “freshly floral” and the individual flowers were loose and visible. With the compressed tea cake, a puehr knife was needed to pry some off before brewing as it was more like traditional puehr cake tea just made from the flowers instead of the leaves. I’m sure that there was some aging for the compressed cake and while both are somewhat difficult to find I’m sure that many will find it worth the effort. If you have an eBay account or aren’t affraid of trying an overseas purchase, here is a link to the compressed tea cake from an American who lives in Kunming China which is located in Yunan province. I’ve been purchasing teas from him for several years now and consider him a reputable vendor. He is the one who first introduced me (accidentally as I’d never seen puehr tea much less tasted it but I bought one anyway and enjoyed it) to puehr teas.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Pu-erh-Tea-Tree-Flowers-Cake-Cha-Hua-Beeng-357-gra m_W0QQitemZ350031306525QQihZ022QQcategoryZ38181QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1V QQ_trksidZp1638.m118.l1247QQcmdZViewItem
Regena I can only imagine how wonderful the taste of your honey from the Glenburn Tea Estate must bee (misspelling intended)! Take care and keep drinking those lovely teas!
Cheers and blessings
Fr. Patrick
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Wow, I would love to try some of that honey, I hope it becomes commercially available here.
Here’s a question that reveals some of my vast ignorance about tea and tea plants (maybe you can answer this, Rajiv): what do the fruits of a tea plant look like, and are they used for anything ever? I remember a chewing gum called “Teaberry” from my younger days, but I always thought it was just a name–is there such a thing as tea berries?
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Anne, the tea bush produces a seed pod, seeds and a flower. No fruit per say.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Interesting, thanks for answering my question!
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:21 pm
You’re welcome. I remember and used to enjoy Teaberry gum. In fact, on rare occasions if you were lucky enough, you could have found me doing the Teaberry Shuffle. FYI, although my memory may not be serving me well, I think that the name Teaberry refers to the common name of an actual bush that grows somewhere in the states. If it serves me further, I think it has a distinct Wintergreen fragrance but don’t know if that is imparted as a taste to the berries themselves.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I remember teaberry gum! I found a website where you can purchase it and/or learn about it.
There is a wonderful reproducion of an ad from 1945, I think, that shows a cup of coffee and a pack of teaberry gum.
As a kid, I thought it was a kind of cinnamon flavor. I’d like to see your teaberry shuffle, Sandy!
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
For Anne - a little explanation of tea seed and its oil:
Tea seeds are borne in capsules, each containing one to three seeds. The kernel, which make up about 70% of the weight of seeds are rich in oil content. The oil extracted from the seeds of Camellia species both cultivated as well as other species is termed as tea seed oil.
Rajiv Lochan
April 4th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Rajiv, thanks for the info. Is tea seed oil used for anything in particular–cooking, cosmetics, agricultural, mechanical, etc? I’ll bet it’s expensive to extract!
April 4th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Anne - Tea seed oil is an excellent cooking oil, similar to olive oil in its healthy properties. Monounsaturated, has high smoking point, cold pressed etc. Has been used in China for cooking for a long time. I think it is mostly derived from a subspecies of the Camellia genus… maybe olifeira or something like that, although sometimes from some of the tea plants as well. It is starting to be more promoted outside of China now because of all of the good press from green tea. I think they may also use it in beauty aids and other products as well.
April 5th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Thanks Sandy for narrating tea seed oil’s uses.
It is also used, since long, for lubricating the woks where most of the green teas are heat dried in China like Long Jing, Huangshan Mao Fung, Taipin Ho Kue etc. etc. If this oils is not smeared on the hot upper surface of the wok, the fresh green tea leaves will either get smoldered or stick to the surface of the wok, because of the high moisture content.
Any other oil used for smearing the wok’s hot upper surface will mask the fragrence of these delicate teas, as fine artisan hands craft these teas to their upper values.