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and importing partner. Joe could blind taste any bottle of wine and tell you its life story, including the grape variety, winery, region of origin, and even what year the grapes were harvested. The sophistication of his palate was staggering. Apparently, there are a chosen few, many of whom are women, who experience taste with tremendous intensity and detail. (Thirty-five percent of all woman, but only 15 percent of men, are known to have superior senses of taste because of an increased number of fungiform papillae, which hold our taste buds.) They are called super tasters, and they are the perfect candidates to judge and evaluate wine. Joe told me that accomplished wine tasters could recognize and memorize flavors better than most people. He was sure that I could develop my taste memories and a conscious palate after some experience and exposure to many different wines.

Joe explained that the grapes used to make wine could take on different characteristics from year to year depending upon the French concept called gout de terroir, or taste of place. Terroir (pronounced tair wahr) is the sum of the unique combination of geographic location, soil and its mineral content, climate, annual rainfall, and temperature during a given season, all of which gives each wine its individual profile and personality. These unique aspects of a region influence the personality of a wine, which is why Champagne is the only designated region for Champagne, and Chianti, Italy, for Chianti wine. These traditions are protected by European Union laws and are now being recognized here in the United States. Joe and I tasted wines all made from the same variety of grape grown in different regions, and then different varieties of grapes all grown in the same region. All of these wines tasted remarkably different from one another.

Joe explained the sensory process of evaluating wines: Before you taste it, you look at it and sniff it, evaluating it for color and then swirling it in your glass to release the bouquet. Finally, you swish it in your mouth to release the full flavor and texture. The last taste sensation was a wine’s aftertaste or the final impression you are left with. Tasting, he explained, is essentially an olfactory experience. Try tasting something with a stuffed-up nose. It’s impossible. Wine also has its own descriptive vocabulary, and Joe always had the perfect term to precisely describe each taste we experienced. Dry, smoky, fruity, feminine, or sweet were some of the descriptive words he used.

It quickly became apparent to me that there were many correlations between wine and honey. Both were agricultural products harvested in the late summer, and the tastes of both were governed by floral sources. I had collected a number of different honeys from around the world and started taking note of the differences in color, texture, flavors, and nectar sources. The varietals of honey that I’d sampled from around the world seemed endless, and soon I convinced Joe to put his super palate to use tasting honey. Many of the same terms used to describe wine could also be applied to the taste of honey, and we made up a few terms of our own. At this point I began to understand the real depth of experience that honey had to offer. My experience of working with wine made my reverence for honey even deeper, and I believed that honey deserved the same noble recognition as wine.

ARTISANAL HONEY, TERROIR, AND VINTAGES

It can be said that honey is only as good as the beekeepers who harvest it.

Artisanal honeys are those produced by individuals using traditional methods and thus preserving the integrity of their products. With artisanal honey, quality and character are highlighted, rather than quantity and consistency. Beekeepers have to make many decisions regarding the management of their honeybees during a single season. Timing is everything, so colonies have to be at their peak strength and available to forage the fields at the exact time of the nectar flow. Beekeepers must select appropriate field locations for their honeybees and know when the