What a great week this was!  I have some help coming to clean the winery floor, we had snow, and I spent an evening tasting wines and Birchrun Hills cheeses along with early harvest and late harvest honeys. Even though I love snow, (and a clean wine room floor), the highlight was the tasting. 

We started with 3 glasses of wine each.  In order of body, the first glass was Barbera, the second was Felicity, and the third was Syrah.  We had 4 cheeses, the first was Equinox, the second Little Chardy, the third Red Cat, and the last was Birchrun Blue. Midway through the tasting we brought some of my friend, David’s, honey out.  I have two bottles; one is an early harvest honey and one a late harvest honey. 

The late harvest honey is as dark as molasses, the early harvest very light in color.  Both honeys came from the same hive but at different times of the year.  Doing research on ‘why is late harvest wine dark in color’, I was met with the same kind of controversy as ‘what causes the red wine headache’.   

In conversation with Aaron, my tasting friend, late harvest honey is dark because the spring flowers are gone, and the bees are foraging the nectar from ripened fruit.   I checked with David and he several fruit trees and berry bushes on his property along with his beautiful flower gardens. 

The flavors of both honeys were very different and both so lovely and the difference adding one or the other honey to a wine and cheese tasting was surprising to me to say the least!  For example, the addition of late harvest honey to Birchrun Blue and Syrah gives an elegance and polish to the Syrah, but if you try the honey alone with the Syrah the honey kills the flavors of the wine.

It feels extraordinarily personal knowing what your bees were foraging when they made their honey … much like where your grapes are grown and where your wine is aged or whose milk is in your cheese.

There were so many great pairings and conversely some not so great. This is another topic or perhaps even a class on “Wine and Cheese Pairing, “Oh, this wine tastes terrible” and “Oof, I don’t like this cheese!””

Cheers!

Sharon

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should,
for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”
- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Photo credit: Earth.org